It’s true that China are well ahead when it comes to digital payments and their latest leap is facial recognition software that allows a customer to pay with a simple smile.
Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate have launched this service in Hangzhou where it is being trialed with KFC. The payment does not require a smartphone and instead, assuming that the customer has already signed up to the Alipay app and enabled facial recognition, will verify their identity through a 3D camera located at the point of sale.
The company showed off this technology at IFA in Germany two years ago alongside the option to pay with a selfie. Since then, options have advanced. Alibaba uses a technology called Face++ from the Chinese startup Megvii which has raised over $150 million from investors including Foxconn.
Alibaba is an investor in Yum China, which operates KFC and other Chinese fast food franchises including McDonalds and Taco Bell, and the company has been pushing its vision of the future of commerce for some time now. Earlier this year it launched a cashless store and currently operates 10 stores in Shanghai that use a mobile app to optimize the customer’s experience.
