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| Ma Yun, founder of Alibaba |
China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has revealed a facial recognition technology which makes mobile payment as easy as taking a selfie.
The new payment method, called "Smile to Pay", was first demonstrated by Alibaba's founder Jack Ma at the 2015 CeBit technology trade fair held in Hanover, Germany on March 15. He used the method to purchase a souvenir stamp from Alibaba's website.
The payment procedure only takes two steps. The first is to collect a user's facial information and the second is to scan the user's face for payment.
After the user's identity is verified, a transaction will be acknowledged through a notification.
The new method simplifies payment procedures by replacing password for identity verification.
As security concern has long been a major barrier for online transactions, Alibaba said that its facial recognition payment system has an accuracy of above 99 percent.
The method is currently in beta mode.
Chen Jidong, technical director of the Ant Financial, an Alibaba's affiliate, said technologies are needed to be developed to prevent fake identity attacks before it is put into use.
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