Debut of facial ID technology sparks controversy

CHINA: A FRONT RUNNER

When it comes to digital payments, China has been a front runner, and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba recently rolled out the world's first "smile to pay" service, allowing its customers to pay with a mere flash of a smile.

The "smile to pay" service was launched by Alibaba's Ant Financial affiliate in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, also the location of the company's headquarters, where customers can complete the payment process even without carrying a smartphone.

Faces are scanned by a 3D camera at the point-of-sale to verify customers' identity, with additional security assured by an option of phone number verification.

Ant Financial, which operates China's largest mobile payment tool Alipay, has already allowed its 450 million active users to access their digital accounts by scanning their faces.

Within a month, people's faces have been added up with more functions in China such as ID cards, boarding cards, train tickets and even passports.

"People would be able to travel all around the world without even carrying their passports or smartphones; your face is everything in the future," said Jack Ma, Alibaba Group's founder and chairman.

Actually, the world-shocking technology is already old hat for some customers of China Merchants Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China, who have been able to get cash from the Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) without even bringing their bank cards.

Since 2015, China Merchants Bank has installed the face ID function in 1,000 of its ATMs in 106 Chinese cities, followed by the Agricultural Bank, which in January enabled 470 of its ATMs to dispense cash by scanning its customers' faces, with an expansion plan of 100,000 ATMs in China.

Customers just need to take a picture to make sure the image scanned at the scene can match the pre-scanned photograph, effectively trimming the risk of counterfeited cards and avoiding such incidents as cards getting stuck in the ATMs.

In line with Chinese regulations, those who use the Face ID function will have a daily withdrawal limit of 3,000 yuan ($455), compared with the 20,000 yuan ($3,032) limit for daily withdrawals via bank cards.

Chinese cities are also cracking down on jaywalker by installing facial recognition kits at intersections to identify and shame them by posting their photos on public screens.

It still remains to be seen whether the Face ID technology will expand to become the norm. But when the whole world is taking cautious steps towards the technical innovation, China has been a pioneer to embrace the technology.