Forex Marketz Daily Forex News – Fully Markets Update
Alibaba (BABA: NYSE) is looking to add mobile face recognition to its mobile app to help make payments more secure. Before making payments, your phone will scan your face, to ensure who is making the purchase. The CEO of Alibaba, Jack Ma, teased this new technology yesterday.
The will call this new service Smile to Pay and it is now in beta testing. It was shown off at the CeBit trade fair earlier this morning. Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba is creating the technology to use with AliPay, a service similar to Apple’s (AAPL: Nasdaq) Apple Pay.
Online transaction payments are surging. They should hit $4.7 trillion by the end of 2019 and already are up $2.5 trillion from 2014. Companies like Alibaba and Apple are vying for a piece of this growing market. Even Samsung has jumped into the fray with Samsung Pay, unveiled with it new Galaxy s6 flagship smartphone.
Companies Need More Safety Protocols
Providers are looking to make mobile payments safe and secure through different authentication types. From fingerprint identification, with Apple and Samsung to facial recognition from Alibaba. Some companies are looking into retinal scanning. Another system being developed, by the e-commerce giant, is “Kong Fu.” This will allow a purchaser to scan a picture or tattoo. Another system will enable a purchase when someone speaks a trigger phrase.
Smile to Pay will be tested in China and there is no date for its official release. There are many possibilities to secure payments and the company will launch this product in other countries once testing in China is complete.
