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I reckon many people have seen the latest “Smile-to-Pay” facial payment technology that are introduced in China. Large companies like, Tencent is using this in their popular WeChat app and other companies like Alipay are spending millions to develop their own technology like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/smile-to-pay-chinese-shoppers-turn-to-facial-payment-technology

So, do you think this is a truly revolutionary payment option or is this just an extension of the Chinese surveillance goals? Now, you cannot deny that you made a payment or that you were involved in a payment, because every face is unique.

Will the millions of people in China blindly adopt this technology, because these platforms are widely used already or will they opt for something a bit more anonymous like Bitcoin? <The Chinese people are very disciplined, so I think they would just bend the knee again and go for facial recognition.>

The convenience is also a big factor, just imagine leaving your home to go shopping without a wallet or anything to remember... you just take a product or pay for a service by looking into a camera and you pay with your face.  ::)

Let's discuss.

I first encountered face recognition technology some 10 years ago when I bought my ASUS laptop. There was a option to log-in with facial recognition, but I must admit that efficiency was not at a high level. I completely forgot about it until such an option appeared on smartphones, but I never use it since I have fingerprint reader and password, which I find much more secure protection for my device.

This type of payment is certainly interesting, user just need to link their photo to bank account, and after that there is no need to carry cash, cards or remember PINs. But what interests me is how accurate that system is, can it happen that two very similar people swap identities, what about identical twins?

Perhaps as additional protection this smile to pay should have fingerprint reader. This would be just extra security, and users still wouldn’t have to carry any cards or remember PIN.

Yea, facial recognition technology is definitely not something new, but to my knowledge it has not been used with a payment option before this.  ??? I know some Banks takes photo's of all their customers and you simply link that to your fingerprint... so when you want to do something in the Bank.. you simply use your finger to "unlock" the account and then the Bank clerk can see a picture of you.. to verify that you are the owner of that account.

The concept to pay with your face is nice, but as you said... what happens if identical twins use this feature? Would it also "verify" your account, if you use a facial mold of someone else's face, like they do in the movies with makeup?   

Chinese technology are growing faster, it started from their cashless payment and now a more advance to do transactions. I’m just wondering how can you smile while you are paying bills that was made by your Girlfriend, haha nevertheless this is really an awesome update. Its also good if they fully accept crypto and do it with a smile as well.

China is taking the social credit system to a new level. Now they would have all money and loans on their face. The own face would be the private key for their wallet. It would be super easy unless people find a way to use others face. I hope they soon integrate a chip in every Chinese to be safe of face copying scam.

Oh boy this is definitely going to be very convenient(no cards and wallets!), but with the trad-eoff though? In exchange for your privacy? Oh hell nah. Not a chance. Unfortunately I really really doubt that the citizens of China would complain, because you know, they might not want to get social credit points deducted from them. I'm even going to bet that if you show such a feature to other countries like the United States, a good percentage of people are going to like this(even though they shouldn't).

To be honest with the current situation of China, I'd say it's probably worse than what was shown on Netflix's Black Mirror episode: nosedive.

I don't know you guys, but I'm happy that technology is growing faster to levels that I can't imagine, BUT I'm not comfortable with this kind of technology, I really like my privacy, even if I don't do anything wrong, but I'm not confortable at all

well, as long as people are paying with anything other than cash (like credit cards,...) they can be tracked so the government can surveil them easily. so this new payment method may not change much about that.
it is surely interesting though i am curious to know how accurate it is and how many bugs it has. for example whath appens if you grow facial hair like a mustache or a full beard, will you lose access to your money :D

Hahaha this. They'd have to do a lot better than Apple's iOS face recognition(Face ID). While this was definitely last year and that apple's Face ID most likely has improved and maybe fixed this problem already, I had a mutual friend that had a very very identical twin(pretty much their hair bangs is the only noticeable facial difference between the twins), and the twin could unlock the phone with no problem at all.

I did remembered a video in China about a surveillance camera that can identify a person and can even give some information about thay guy, even a old photo of him. Maybe that is connected here and as far as I know they already fixed the problem where the camera can mistakenly identify other people's faces. This might be a good payment technology but I look serious despite knowing myself I am smiling.

Wow, I've never even imagined anything like that. At first, I thought it was a cool idea, but when I went through the article, I reconsidered. I would probably freak out if I had to pay with my face. I mean, first of all, you clearly realize that you are being watched and even scanned in a way. Secondly, the process makes your face instrumental, a way of paying. It's a very serious objectivation of the human body, I don't think it's comfortable...And it seems that the people who tried the service mainly felt uncomfortable as well. They said they felt "ugly", and I think it's because this objectivation affected them.

Centralized biometric system is dangerous. I would have suggested making it optional and amending the law to gurantee it remains optional for a long time,but governments can be unpredictable... wont be surprised if they craftily make biometric authentication difficult to resist while still operating under the amended law. People who opt out could find living normal life impossible in such situation.

Decentralized biometric is way better and will definitely be optional. People who don't want to go through the biometric could use non-biometric applications within the blockchain but at their own risk.
 Applications that allow biometric or use better biometric alternatives would be recommended to most users of the Blockchain. However, no one should be able to tie any biometric information to a particular user in a Blockchain-based biometric system. It should be anonymous/private

Sound like a movie to me. ;D

Anyway, this kind of technology existed already, i can say since Facebook already has it and our smartphones and laptop has it too. But what bothers me is the government already has your personal information and can easily locate you wherever you are as long as they see you in their camera. You are now under in their centralized system which is basically the start of losing your privacy as a free citizen.

find someone that uses face recognition, go to their social media, point camera at their picture and your in.
imagine your face as a password.. then imagine a password tattood to your forehead for anyone to take a pic of and you realise how insecure it is

That's the reality. Truly it is highly insecure compared to other security we've got. Before face recognition it was finger print where it is easy to make people go unconscious and steal their funds and personal data. Things go advanced, along with the same it increases the risk much higher. A single error could cause a very big loss.

maybe one of the hidden reasons of implementing this technology is the control of the government to its citizens. of course they will not directly imply that purpose!
but this advancement in their payment technology has repercussions to the privacy of the individuals. but if you are a good citizen and dont bother about your privacy, theres nothing to worry about.
we are already in a digital age where a lot of our movements can be tracked by social media or any other app from our laptop, smartphones and other gadgets. so this development is not really a new thing anymore.

From what I read from the article the Chinese government is not the developer of the platform and I personally believed there's nothing bad in using the facial payment system as temporary payment and that's if the Chinese government doesn't later abuse the no anonymity part of the payment platform.

absolutely, the weakness of this system is the twin faces, they must strengthen it by adding an eye scanner, fingerprint or PIN feature.

of course, I as a wife would be angry if I could not pay for something using my husband's money  :D
it seems like this facial payment technology will be very difficult to spread throughout the world.

Too dangerous and prone to mistakes. If this is the same thing used in State surveillance, face alone is not enough. China infamously identifies protesters with the way they walk, probably in combination with the face and other features to reduce somehow false positives.

This face thing is probably in addition to something else, perhaps a smartphone app.

I'm not defending this smile-to-pay thing, but I don't think it's this easily exploitable. As far as I know(not sure, don't quote me on this), most decent facial recognition systems take note of the sort of "depths" of a certain face. So chances are that simply using a photo of a person won't do the job.

There's like 100% chance that China is doing this to harvest even more data for their facial-recognition surveillance system, currently they mostly rely on camera, but this payment method would allow them to get accurate daily data for users tied to all their KYC data. I won't be surprised if this facial payments comes with some incentives like cashback, better deals on loans, higher credit score and so on.

Yes, this could be the case. It's the clever way how to get dara from people offering them different convenient services. Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable with facial payment system.
And it would be interesting to know for how long and in what purposes would authorities keep that data.  In.Europe because of GDPR something like that wouldn't be possible.

Let's see how successful such a new recognition technology will be. She, of course, is very interesting. However, anyone who takes your device by force and brings it to your face will completely manage your money. Imagine walking, getting hit in the face or on the head, and when you wake up, you find that all the money from your account has been withdrawn. I don’t know, of course, the level of security depends on the country of residence, but I would not risk having such a way of controlling my wallet.

This is a very good technological development. Restaurant and other retail shop customers will be excited with this technology. I think if there is some cryptocurrency bussiness related developer can make this technology, then many investors will be interested with it. Megvii with it's face++ technology that used by alibaba raised $150 million dollars from the investors. Cryptocurrency related developers have to create similar technology. I am sure that it will be good for cryptocurrency adoption.

Nah, I do not think that will work, because facial recognition software use a special software to scan the face with millions of dots to create a 3D map of the face. A picture has no debt and if you read more about this, you will see that they actually require you to turn your head, so it will detect if the source is a flat picture or if it is a real person.  ;)

Technology like Bio metric fingerprint scanners can even detect if you are using a finger that was detached, so technology are improving and they will detect if you are trying to fool it.  ;D

Technology sure is moving fast in China, The same will make easier to target people or gather tons of data. There's even facial recognized waste collection there, Which opens to only registered faces and has some reward or point system, It's nuts! I wouldn't sign-ups for that shit, I prefer to use password or finger print (Only if necessary), I want privacy and security more than convenience.

It must be horrific enough to be involved in an accident or an attack where you suffer a facial deformity and require reconstructive surgery, but how much worse would it be if your whole identity relied on the success of that surgery?  It's a stupid idea.  Look at the recent rise in things like "acid attacks".  How much more prevalent and damaging would those be if it becomes a prerequisite for our face to look the same just to spend our money?



True enough, but with the advances being made in 3D printing, it probably won't be too long before someone could conceivably print out a realistic mask to wear.  A simple photo still likely wouldn't be sufficient to generate the mapping for it, but how would you even know if you were being filmed/scanned as you walked into a building, for example?

Well i hope the government does not manipulate the use of this technology and pry on the people of China nevertheless it's an amazing technology paying for purchases with your face lol.

That would require extra cameras or infrared sensors driven by AI. My smartphone for example has an infrared laser it uses to measure dept up to a certain distance, which in this case would confirm your point.

If you however have a lower end smartphone with an ordinary camera, there isn't going to be a capability of depth measurement, which makes manipulation obviously easier.

I am still shocked by how many people use their latest smartphone models in combination with facial recognition. My smartphone has that option too, but I simply use an old fashion swipe-to-unlock feature.

I'm not even using the fingerprint scanner. I'm too paranoid to use these features.

There is no doubt that it is a truly revolutionary development to incorporate facial recognition to payment but every technology has its negative points if the team behind it start misusing it. There is a paranoia that every Chinese technology use their platform to collect data and there are some truth in that too as most of the companies are funded by the government and they will have some stake in that due to their dictator reign.

Even digital payment applications with advanced security measures are getting hacked, and these people are talking about making payments with facial recognition. I guess the Russian hackers will be very happy after hearing this news. Technology is not that advanced to allow facial recognition, especially in sync with payments. It is not error-free and prone to mistakes. I have no issues if they want to use facial recognition on top of the already existing mechanisms. But using facial recognition alone can be very risky. I would say that we are at least 10 years away from using this sort of technology. It can be used along with finger-print reading or retina scan.

I think facial payment technology is a bad idea. And hopefully no one will use it everywhere

There's always a bad side and good side of every technology, you are tend to emphasize here more the bad side which you are correct, they can always use this for surveillance, same with what is the government is doing to us, but that's the trend now, people usually value the convenience over the possible risk.

I'm not familiar with this technology but this will surely be more successful due to the convenience it will bring.
People would think it's cool but those who have enough knowledge and are curious on the negative side, they sure will study the bad side, and might adopt.
Well, as for me, I'm still with crypto being anonymous although we can't seem to enjoy that in the long run.

i think is another development to the technology, facial technology has help alots in term of security but not up to our expectations. its add to the procedure of security. privacy matters alot, but if its worth the transparency everyone can engage in smile-to-pay technological payment

Maybe this technology is not perfect, but it won't be until it's widely used so that any defects can be corrected. This is the case with every relatively new technology, and someone is probably work on this for last 10 years since it was available at that time. Abuse opportunities certainly exist and they are realistic, but i believe there is some kind of insurance in such cases. Maybe same as someone steal your card (PIN) and withdraw money on ATM, bank will need proof that abuse had occurred, and the damaged user will be compensated.

I think this technology is most aimed at encouraging users to spend more money in "easy way" by offering something completely new and "secure". All you need is your smiling face, forget on cards, PINs or cash :)

Well, nothing stops people from going for a re-scan to "update" the database with their "new" facial features. They will possibly have some kind of alternative recognition method to help with situations like this. Examples : Retina scans or finger print scans etc.

My main concern is with the Muslim women that has to cover their faces at all time... how will they pay for services and goods, if this is going to be the only payment option. According to a study in 2015, Islam has 1.8 billion adherents, making up about 24.1% of the world population. (Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country) <--- Not all of them are women, but it is still a very high percentage of people that would not be able to use this system.  ::)

This will become new normal for Chinese people.
Their privacy is no more, they already have mass surveillance and everything about them is recorded ,saved and used.
So there is no if difference if they have payments with their faces in addition to surveillance ,

The rest of the developed world will not allow this, privacy is too important.

in my opinion this is the most important part of the article:


so everything remains the same for Chinese citizens, they may have a lot of technology, but they also have little freedom. What good is having a lot of technology and having little freedom? I prefer not to have a lot of technology but to have my freedom. I don't think this news is good for the people of china. honestly freedom is something that has no price

in the new world everything is now advanced . it all started with smartphones . smartphone now have a fingerprint scanner and a selfie recognition that can act as a password  . chinese have gotten that idea and now implement it on more uses such as for paying  but technologies like this are not only present on china  . ive seen a simmilar service before on our country  .

where there is an app/wallet that you can use to pay and you can include selfies ,videos and or other personal files   .

I want to express my opinion. Don't you think that all these technologies are supposedly that aimed at simplifying everyday business like unlocking a phone or paying for services, are making people subservient or even slaves? Thanks to technologies like “Smile-to-Pay” or FaceID, people are degrading, making themselves a bunch of experimental subjects run by large companies or authorities.

I am glad that despite this progress, people realized at least that banks are manipulating everyone and are starting to abandon their services in favor of crypto. I hope that this will also be the case with technologies like “Smile-to-Pay” or FaceID, and people will prefer some developments and technologies based on blockchain or smth like that of being really safe from manipulation.

Are you sure about the sentence I bolded in your comment? Because for me the Chinese all look like identical twins. Again, the population of China gives her the strong advantage to consume whatever she produces and this population is in billions, not millions.

This was my first thought too, exactly :D :D

Or, women will do a new makeup in the morning with a new style to the eyes, and they won't be able to pay with their phones because of the face recognition...

Fingerprint, faceID, anything biometric... these are the things you should use as a kind of username and not as a password...
If you start the payment with some biometric thing and you have to input your password or PIN, it could be secure enough... But if you can just authorize a payment with something biometric... a bit scary...

Why?
What happens if you forget your  password? Or hackers gain access to it? Or somehow you expose it? No worry, you set up a new password and voilá, you're fine
But what happens if somehow your biometric data (fingerprint, etc...) leaks out and a hacker gains access to it? You just can't change your fingerprint (at least easily... ), and you're in trouble...

Smile-to-pay doesn't seem safe to me. Quite the contrary

I have seen technologies like this in movies and I have seen how people have even used it against the owner, although the crime rate that would be involved with facial recognition cannot be as high as that of finger print, codes, password and the rest.

Facial recognition may still be risky, but it could actually be the best, because it would be impossible to clone the face, and the highest a criminal can do is to force the person to use it against his will which may not be much common, and you would not tell me that people would cut people's head just to get it done, where would they carry the head to and how would they do that without being notice.

I think facial recognition would really be a nice solution, but they should never make it like the only thing that would be relied on, it should still have another form of verification along with it.

a step forward in tech progress

I heard that China has such a advanced facial technology that even their CCTV cameras use it. When you commit a crime in China, a simple crime like jaywalking, the CCTV cameras can see who you are and automatically issue you a fine without any questions asked. They don't even need police officers, it is done automatically with artificial intelligence and facial recognition.

And it has become a natural thing if face recognition is used as an alternative payment ID. Just like our fingerprints that have different shapes, our faces are also different from each other.

It's a really nice step towards progress and security though. Adding facial recognition to fingerprints can really help secure bank accounts and such. But it's also bothering at times since like every transaction you make, your face is recorded and basically every company now has your face. They can use that then to basically gather information about you and stuff like that. Well, facebook almost does that at the same time since you use your face as your profile pic at the same time, but that has your guarantee and you can adjust privacy settings to whom can see it and such. On the other hand, once the pic gets to the company, you don't really have control anymore as to where it goes to.

Well come to think of it, most countries use number plate recognition to issue traffic fines for traffic offenses, so it is not unlikely for this to transition to face recognition to target people without number plates. The UK are covered with very advances CCTV cameras and they use face recognition software to identify possible criminals in high risk areas.

CCTV and face recognition software are being improved at a rapid pace, so it is not unrealistic that these cameras would be used as a payment method in the future.  ;)

If we will talk about China, they will adopt for sure this Facial technology, they have no choice, but the more important thing and thats what makes me confused, why we always have fear from the government?                                 
why always try to hide our spending and that fear of taxes, why we can't use our hard-earned money as we want? no fear no doubt no tears.                                 

Smile-to-Pay: Chinese Shoppers Turn to Facial Payment Technology. China is embracing facial payment technology, which allows consumers to purchase goods simply by posing in front of point-of-sale (POS) machines equipped with cameras after linking an image of their face to a digital payment system or bank account. For me, since you can copy a face of a person by prosthetic and make ups,  I think it would turn into a disaster or much bigger problem since it only recognize the face of a person and today it is easily copy a face of a person.

I've actually seen so much changes in China over the past years of going there on vacation, back 4-5 years ago, there was no one who used these payment systems like Wechat Pay, Alipay, Smile to pay, etc. China has advanced so much in the recent years, and it's said to see the Finance system they've built up over the past couple of years but then not be accepting of blockchain tech.

There aren't a lot of security risk I think, you can only use smile to pay for small payments (like a meal), and it's pretty good face recognition and needs to detect movements from you, which makes it even better.

It's great to see innovations but having facial recognition for something that should be secure such as payment should have a robust way of recognizing different faces. Faces in China are quite similar to each other and I beleive it can be exploited even with the use of 3D map sensors. Fingerprint is more secure and more difficult to duplicate than faces when faces can have similarities, especially when twins. However, in your argument that the Chinese government adds it for their surveillance, it's no different from other big companies, social media platforms, or other governments.

China's technology is too advanced and they're always open to adopt the latest technology method. Facial recognition payment could assure the security of each transaction. However, I'm still sure that there will be lapses and errors using this method. I would still prefer the usual way of payment. I believe that this kind of method would be more popular and other countries would also implement it.

I never thought it would be for surveillance until you mention it. It has a big chance that it will be use to collect data from people like what other mobile app are doing. This was good when you fist hear given that you will just smile to pay, it was very convinient but there is a chance that they are just collecting information. On the other hand, using other payment method such as crypto or specifically bitcoin which provides anonymous features. As we all know transactions happening in crypto world makes you anonymous and that is what most of us wanted.

I agree, while every technology has the potential to be harmful if used with that purpose, I do not see anything positive about technologies like that, the supposed convenience they bring is very limited and the harmful effects are too big to ignore, paying with cash was the norm a few decades ago and people simply decided they did not wanted to carry a few bills in their pocket and instead carried a credit card, and now they want to get rid of the credit card and link your ability to make purchases with your face, at that point how long it will take for governments to ban all transactions except those in which you need to identify yourself?

This is somehow the same type of payment I saw maybe in Europe I guess if I correctly remember, they are using chips implanted to their body connected to a wallet app you just need to tap your wrist to approve the payment. This is quite the same and would be beneficial for us all specially in security terms where you don't even need to memorize your pin and bring some cards you just need yourself alone.

Every technology will have a negative aspect too but you have to think bigger, if companies are coming up with solutions that will make things better for the human civilization, so be it and i know there are many problems that will arise including privacy issues as these technologies will be used in other sectors as well to monitor people by the government. Where do we balance these will be always a big question.

And what if a program like Face App somehow will applied. Already a lot of articles came out about how with this program people become victims of fraud. Will this technology recognize such things?

If you are not careful enough on what you do and what hardware you use or what software you are using, then your privacy will be at risk, every application you download will have a backdoor to your hardware as you are giving them permission to capture all the details regarding you. This is not the case with one application, it is the case with each and every application you use in your mobile phone and computer.
People who are interested in facial payment will use those and you have the choice whether you want any of these technologies.

That really depends on your views of China. I think all the recent changes and advances they've made are all very slow and controlled, with the government or the company (usually Wechat) having all of the power and being able to do as they so, please. It's one of the reasons why BTC was fully banned from their system, and it's why they are developing their own centralized cryptocurrency.

As for the smile to pay technology, I believe you can easily set limits on how much money you can pay via it, and its facial recognition is really good compared to other examples we see, and since you need to do a movement to confirm the payment, it's even safer.