Alibaba shows off facial recognition to secure mobile payments
Alipay users could soon be able to pay for their purchases by scanning their face with their smartphone. E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s CEO Jack Ma showed off the technology in his keynote speech at the CeBIT technology trade fair in Hanover, Germany on Sunday.
To demonstrate the technology, Ma bought an old souvenir stamp from Hanover on Alibaba.com during his speech. While on stage, he scanned his face with his phone’s front camera and was able to complete the transaction. The stamp was then sent over to the Mayor of Hanover’s office.
“Online payments are always a big headache. You forget your password…you worry about security,” said Ma.
The service is called “Smile to Pay” and was developed in partnership with Megvii, a Beijing company that provides cloud-based facial recognition software.
Currently in beta mode, the “Smile to Pay” service will initially be rolled out in China, but no official launch date has been announced. CNBC spoke to an Alibaba spokesperson who said, “There are “all sorts of possibilities” about launching this in other countries too.”
According to Juniper Research, online and mobile payments will hit $4.7 trillion by 2019 and everyone is trying to capture market share. Apple Pay was launched October while recently Samsung launched Pay and Google launched Android Pay. All of these providers are trying to make authentication techniques for mobile payments more secure, for example, Apple Pay relies on an iPhone’s fingerprint scanner.
Alibaba, however, are looking at new verification techniques according to the spokesperson. One technique would allow you to confirm a purchase by speaking a certain trigger phrase while another called “Kong Fu” would allow payment verification by scanning a tattoo or a pet.
In 2011, Alipay was spun off from Alibaba and has gained huge popularity in China with over 300 million registered users. Rumors surfaced in October about a possible partnership between Apple and Alibaba, regarding bringing Apple Pay to China.
