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• An application for the use of palm recognition in payments via
mobile phones and other devices was submitted by a division of Alibaba’s
fintech affiliate.• Starting in May, passengers on Beijing’s Daxing Airport Express
Line can pay for train fare by waving their palms through Tencent’s WeChat Pay
app.As Chinese tech companies scramble to investigate the use of
biometrics in cashless transactions, Ant Group, a fintech subsidiary of Alibaba
Group Holding, has filed a patent application addressing the use of palm
recognition in digital payments.According to data made public this week by the business registration
website Tianyancha, Ant subsidiary Alipay (Hangzhou) Information Technology Co.
applied for a patent on the use of palm recognition in payments and devices in
March as facial recognition became a more popular method of payment
verification in China.A patent applicant may decide to publish details about their application
up to 18 months after filing, according Chinese patent rules. In order to
determine if a patent can be awarded, authorities will examine the application.Tianyancha provided a summary of the patent documentation that
demonstrated the functionality of Ant’s technology. A camera on the user
terminal will take a picture of the user’s palm after they make a request for
payment verification, and it will be compared to the user’s previously
submitted biometrics data.
The user terminal may come in the form of a mobile phone, a tablet
computer, an e-book reader, a virtual reality device, or a vehicle-mounted
device, according to the information.
The application came after Chinese media reported in February that
Alipay had been “accelerating the development” of its palm payments technology,
including hardware equipment, since last year.Alipay will not be the first to roll out such services. The domestic
version of Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, known as Weixin Pay, in May started
allowing riders in Beijing’s Daxing Airport Express Line to pay train fares by
showing their palms.According to Tencent, the device automatically deducts the fare from
users’ WeChat accounts when they hold their hands over a turnstile scanner. The
company has announced that it is gradually implementing palm payments in a
variety of locations, including offices, schools, shops, and restaurants.Together, WeChat Pay and Alipay control more than 90% of the Chinese
mainland’s mobile payments market.Palm recognition has also been a focus of major tech firms
worldwide. In the United States, e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com introduced its
own hand-scan technology, dubbed Amazon One, in offline stores in 2020. It was
then expanded to numerous locations of its food brand Whole Foods.Source: south china morning post
*The opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author.* Follow Us
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