You can now pay with a wide variety of methods including cash, debit/credit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and even Dogecoin. You can now use a tap, click, or even your phone to make a payment. Alibaba now prefers that you pay with a grin.
With trusted options like WePay and AliPay, China’s financial infrastructure is light years ahead of the rest of the world. Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba, plans to expand on those gains. It’s replacing the need for a phone with facial recognition technology.
You like the concept of “face payment,” right? See how Ant Financial plans to revolutionize online trade below.
Paying with Your Face: The Basics
You can now pay with a wide variety of methods including cash, debit/credit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and even Dogecoin. You can now use a tap, click, or even your phone to make a payment. Alibaba now prefers that you pay with a grin.
With trusted options like WePay and AliPay, China’s financial infrastructure is light years ahead of the rest of the world. Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba, plans to expand on those gains. It’s replacing the need for a phone with facial recognition technology.
You like the concept of “face payment,” right? See how Ant Financial plans to revolutionize online trade below.
What it Means for E-Commerce
This is the first product of its kind to be available to consumers, and it only appeared on the market this year. In 2015, Alibaba announced the beta version at CEBIT, and in January of 2018, it demonstrated the final product at CES.
Will it have an effect on international e-commerce, though? After all, the widespread use of the comprehensive WeChat app in China had already primed its users for payment.
Neither the United States nor Europe offer an alternative to WeChat.
According to Ant Financial, the product was not released until the technology had achieved a sufficient level of precision and security to guard against spoofing and fraud. Customers are reassured by a reliable phone number as well. For cases of theft, Alipay provides loss protection as well.
Facial Recognition is Already Common Place in China
Innovative work in the payments industry has been done by Ant Financial and Alipay. The widespread adoption of facial recognition technology in China is, however, responsible for some of its success. Both citizens and law enforcement agencies use facial recognition technology today. This means consumers have an established understanding of its value.
Facial recognition is already being used by the Chinese government in the country’s vast network of surveillance cameras. The police also make use of it. Recent arrests made by Chinese police using facial scanners occurred at a beer festival.
People in Beijing can’t steal toilet paper from public restrooms because of the presence of face scanners. From the perspective of both the regulatory framework and the customer experience, this facilitates early adoption.
Will It Change Western E-commerce? Reluctantly, At First
Customers are drawn to the innovative technology because of its future-forward applications, and its other uses have been commonplace in mobile phones for some time now. It remains unclear, however, how quickly it will catch on with Western tech companies.
Google, the company behind Google Pay and the Google Wallet, among others, has experimented with similar facial recognition projects. One project that would have let Android users take a photo of a person’s face to identify them was abandoned by Google.
Tech companies’ efforts to introduce something similar may be thwarted by privacy concerns in the United States and the European Union. However, businesses will need to improve if they want to meet customers’ rising expectations for a trouble-free and safe buying experience.
Amazon’s Quest for Domination
Amazon has already taken the initiative. It has the potential to overtake other methods of facial recognition for online purchases. However, Amazon’s use may actually increase security rather than decrease it. Smile to Pay’s intention is not to add complication but rather ease to the payment procedure.
But Amazon may gain something from experimenting with facial recognition technology. People still have some say over the information that gets recorded in their online profiles as customers. Users of the software would be required to remove their face coverings. Amazon might use facial recognition to learn more about their customers.
There’s no reason to think Amazon wouldn’t risk more abandoned carts with an extra layer of data in exchange for more data, given that it’s willing to bleed hundreds of millions to stomp on its competition.
Despite these difficulties, Amazon still has the potential to revolutionize the online shopping industry. Consumers are more receptive to tracking now than they were in the past, and Amazon’s reputation doesn’t seem to matter to them.
Other major online retailers would have to implement it if Amazon did. Drop shipping businesses looking to compete with groups like Alibaba should stay vigilant, but mom and pop stores who aren’t too concerned about Amazon probably don’t need to worry.
The Bottom Line
In addition to providing valuable information, facial recognition has the potential to eliminate obstacles to the purchase by eliminating the need for a shopping cart.
Coupled with the confidence shown by Chinese companies in releasing their own version, this could indicate that e-commerce giants like Amazon are prepared to endure the inevitable growing pains associated with introducing this technology.
In the next six months, do you plan on “paying with your face?” No, probably not. When it does, however, it will set off a revolution that will be difficult to stop.
Will We Follow Amazon?
China is years ahead of the West in e-commerce, particularly in dropshipping and payments, and both government and corporate policies continue to speed up products like Smile to Pay.
The ability to use facial recognition to make purchases at stores like Amazon is on the horizon. It’s not completely out of the question that other stores will begin planning the implementation of this technology. When it comes to data mining and increased revenue, Smile to Pay is no gimmick for online retailers.