By akademiotoelektronik, 24/03/2022

Self-checkouts with facial recognition are a reality in China

Benjamin Bruel September 08, 2019 at 7:474 p.m. A smile, no credit card, wallet or cash: facial recognition to pay for purchases continues to grow in China, despite concerns about privacy. Several hundred point-of-sale systems have been installed in Chinese cities to impose facial recognition as a new payment system.

Link faces to bank accounts

The Chinese mobile phone payment system is the most advanced and developed in the world. We also know the system of "social credit" used by the country, which works in part by facial recognition. Now, it is another type of technology that China uses excessively: purchase by facial recognition. Chinese consumers can thus make their purchases simply by passing their head in front of a point-of-sale machine equipped with cameras, which links the features of their face to a digital payment system or a bank account . to take my mobile phone with me, I can go out to do my shopping without taking anything," Bo Hu, owner of a chain of bakeries in the city of Beijing, told AFP. "It was not possible in the early stages of mobile payment, it was only after the development of facial recognition that we were able to pay without needing anything". According to the French-language press agency, Chinese consumers seem " imperturbable" in the face of the development of this technology and the questions it raises about data security and respect for privacy.

“Smiles to pay” in a hundred cities

The technology is developed and implemented by Alipay , the financial arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Although this system is still marginal compared to mobile payment, the company has already installed its machines in a hundred cities and plans to invest more than three billion yuan (420 million dollars) in the next three years, to consolidate the presence of these means of payment. For its part, Tencent, video game juggernaut and owner of the WeChat application, the Chinese WhatsApp with 600 million users, unveiled its new payment technology by facial recognition on mobile in August, referred to as “ Frog Pro ”. Many start-ups are also trying to find a place in this market, which promises to be lucrative... Note also that, recently, a survey by the technological information site Sina Technology revealed that 60% of participants affirmed that scanning their face made them feel "ugly", leading Alipay to promise the addition of " beautifying filters ". Orwellian. Source: AFP