There will come a day when you just need to smile at a camera and your meal will be paid for. At least it looks like we’re heading in that direction. A more health-conscious KFC concept restaurant called KPRO in Hangzhou, China has started to use Alipay facial recognition payment system that will let you pay for your meal with a smile and your mobile phone number. The kiosk that takes the orders will scan your face and require you to enter your mobile phone number to safeguard against fraud.
The system, which is aptly called Smile to Pay, is developed by Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial Services Group. According to the company, they’ve been improving the technology since the beta version was launched by Alibaba founder Jack Ma in 2015 at CEBIT in Germany. While it’s a first service of its kind, using facial recognition for payment services isn’t an exclusive to Ant. The likes of Samsung, PayPal, NEC, and MasterCard have also been testing out this technology.
Source: Alizila