AliPay, the biggest mobile payment app in China, released its latest face-scan payment product named Dragonfly on Thursday.
Facial recognition payment technology has been around in supermarkets, hospitals and even some KFCs in China since last year, but Dragonfly will further lower the installation cost for merchants by 80%, Albaba-backed AliPay says.
Cashless payments through mobile apps can be made almost anywhere in China, from street food stalls to government halls, with AliPay and Wechat Pay being the two dominant players.
Statistics from Alibaba during this year’s “Double 11” shopping festival also suggest that payments through face and fingerprint scans now make up 60% of all transactions. The company says that as facial recognition technology takes the place of QR codes, “paying by smiling” will most likely experience explosive growth over the next three years.
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