One technology that is invented in China with the promise of changing the way things are bought and sold is the Pay with your face.
This personal means of payment which doesn’t need your cash or credit card, or any other information but your face, has been introduced by KFC China. Yes, not a technology firm.
Nevertheless, it was Ant Financial, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba (BABA, Tech30), that launched the new service in the eastern city of Hangzhou, as it seeks to integrate the use of facial recognition which is becoming popular with the government, into businesses.
Once you are done at the Kpro, which is the Chinese version of KFC, they have their faces scanned, and if it matches the ID on the system, they would be required to put in their phone numbers and everything will be completed.
The system has been designed on Ant Financial’s digital payment platform Alipay, which is becoming very popular now with over half a billion users worldwide. In china, it is already allowing people to sign into its Chinese app using their face.
While there are fears that this mat not be very secure, Ant has cone out to say this pay with your face technology or rightly put, facial recognition payment system it is introducing to KFC has been used as a means of payment in other places, so it is not the first.
Over 600 facial features are analyzed by the software to make a match. It also uses a 3D camera and a “liveness” algorithm to cut or even eliminate the chances of people cheating with photos or videos of others.
Apart from Ant, Chinese tech company, Baidu is also making use of the facial recognition payment system. Last year it made use of the system to manage tourist admissions in Wuzhen, a historic town that receives millions of visitors each year.
More so, the staff at the company’s headquarters get to pay with their faces at the company’s restaurants.
More than just using your face to pay, Baidu has also attempted taking it even higher than what Ant is trying to achieve by using the faces of customers at KFC to predict their food preference. This is based on based on factors such as age, mood and gender.
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According to Ant Financial, the technology will soon be introduced to other Chinese retail outlets other than KFC.
Dong Liyun, who is a product manager at Ant Financial revealed that “We hope one day in the future people can go out without their cell phones or wallets.”
