AI tokens have become a retail product in China. A co-branded credit card, consumer phone plans and a municipal lending scheme now all meter artificial intelligence the way telecoms meter mobile data.
State-owned China Telecom opened trial token packages back in May, aiming three tiers of offers at different buyers. Three Token Plan tiers target developers and small firms, with security protection and broadband acceleration available as add-ons. Xingchen, China Telecom’s in-house model, powers them alongside GLM5. Household tiers pair Xingchen with DeepSeek V3.2 for document work, study and writing. Reports put the entry price at 9.9 yuan a month for 10M tokens, and the carrier is introducing a Tianyi Token currency so loyalty points convert into AI packages.
Kimi’s consumer push runs through plastic. A co-branded card with the Agricultural Bank of China, on sale in the mainland since July, attaches Kimi memberships and credits to everyday spending. The everyday Andante tier carries agent quota for document processing, deep research and website deployment; the Allegretto tier, pitched at professionals, multiplies that quota several times over and unlocks parallel agents plus the Kimi Claw tool across cloud, Android and desktop.
Haizhu, a district of Guangzhou, now lets banks review small AI companies on their token consumption rather than fixed assets. Its Token Loan scheme weighs platform credentials and customer payment history alongside usage, with Bank of China, China CITIC Bank and Bank of Guangzhou presenting offers at launch. The district hosts more than 8,000 AI-related enterprises and subsidizes qualifying model companies by up to ¥1.5M a year.
