The quest to improve tech that recognizes palm prints Wang says the introduction of a novel way to pay also serves Tencent’s goal to compete with Alipay, which currently holds onto a larger share of payments in the Chinese payment market. ” He suspects they may be laying the groundwork now for palms in the same way. “That’s an important reason why payment giants are placing facial recognition payment devices in stores in advance. “Biometrics recognition payment has a giant window of opportunity when the era of 5G and multi-screens comes, because the devices can help connect with vendors and users,” says Wang Pengbo, a Beijing-based senior finance analyst at BoTong Analysys. However, it already has some biometric recognition payment setups: One Tencent device, Frog Pro, which looks like a McDonald’s self-serve kiosk but with a sophisticated camera on top to enable payment by facial recognition, was released in 2019 and retails for 1,999 RMB ($276). The company sells devices similar to credit card readers that help vendors scan and process QR codes from customers, which is currently the most popular way to make a payment without cash. And within WeChat, the super app used by more than 1 billion people, a new feature was released last month called “WeChat palm scan payment,” though only those who have registered at one of Tencent’s in-store palm-print scanners can access the feature.Ĭompared with Amazon, which has hundreds of Whole Foods and other retail stores in the US, Tencent has the potential to execute a quicker and wider push of palm-print recognition payment, since almost every store and vendor in China has adopted WeChat Pay (or its rival Alipay) during China’s fintech revolution. There are other signs that Tencent is close to formally releasing the palm-print payment technology: It recently trademarked several names like “微信刷掌 (WeChat palm scan)” and “WePalm,” and secured patents for related camera devices. Please don’t tell external people.” In one photo posted online, a written warning states that photography of the device is prohibited. They are likely still in the trial phase, as they are often shown alongside notes saying “trial location for WeChat palm print scan payment” or “Internal testing. The WeChat payment devices in these videos are iPad-sized white boxes with a screen showing instructions and a camera capturing the palm data. The tactic is similar to that of Amazon, which offered a $10 credit last year for users who enrolled in its palm-print checkout system, Amazon One. In most cases, WeChat offers a small discount, often less than 10 RMB ($1.37), for customers to try out the new feature and submit their palm-print data. That has changed a year later, as Tencent has been testing palm-print recognition devices for months in Shenzhen, the city where the company is headquartered, and Guangzhou, another megacity 65 miles away.Īs shown in social media videos uploaded as early as July, and which I first reported on earlier this month in my “China Report” newsletter, palm-print payment devices for Tencent’s WeChat Pay system are already being used in cafes, bakeries, and supermarkets. At the time, the company responded that it was only an internal research project and there was no plan to apply the tech in real-life settings. In late 2021, Chinese media first reported Tencent was exploring a payment system that relied on scanning users’ palm prints. “So we look at this as a way for people to potentially save a couple of minutes in line at the price of their biometric privacy for the rest of their lives.” WeChat’s secret trials But you can’t change your palm print if that gets compromised,” says Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). When most retailers get hacked, at worst you have to change your credit card number. Indeed, analysts and privacy activists remain skeptical that palm-print recognition should be used in payments-and what would happen if they are. While Amazon was the first major tech company to officially deploy palm-print scanners in its brick-and-mortar stores in the US (it’s spread to nearly 180 locations since 2020), the tech could soon become ubiquitous across China thanks to WeChat Pay’s wide adoption in all types of stores WeChat Pay is already used by over 800 million individuals and 50 million vendors in China.īut even with palm-print recognition’s benefits, installation to such a ubiquitous extent would still come with privacy risks for consumers, not to mention practical complications.
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