Many payment platforms adopt facial recognition in their service. Including many payment platform giants in China like Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat. Those two platforms have even brought facial recognition payments to online and brick-and-mortar retail stores. However, many experts concern about the privacy and cybersecurity risk of using facial recognition for payment platform.
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The Risk
Many customers are not aware when they use facial recognition features, they are giving up their privacy. They just think of the convenience they can get from the feature.
However, the face is very sensitive personal information. If it gets stolen or leaked it will give a tremendous impact on the owner. Unlike bank cards that people can put in their pockets, faces are accessible to the public all the time. Yet, many companies have not considered this fact.
Many companies across the world actively incorporating facial recognition into payment apps. They aim to provide a more seamless and convenient user experience. In Chine, for instance, several banks, hospitals, airports, and hotels have already adopted facial recognition.
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Alipay even added beauty filters to its pay-with-face system, earlier this month. It aims to avoid users to feel ugly when they use facial recognition machines.
However, many pieces of evidence have proven that there is a big risk of using facial recognition for payments. In February, according to a report from South China Morning, there was a case on Shenzhen-facial recognition technology. The technology tracked the movement of more than 2.5 million people in the far-western Xinjiang region.
Besides, In April, a WeChat user in Zhejiang lost more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,450). He lost the money after his roommates unlocked his smartphone by pointing it at his face while he was asleep. Another case is the FaceApp case. The app went viral in 2017 and amassed more than 80 million active users. It has a privacy controversy over how it uses the photos it edits. The startup admitted that it does take the photos when they are edited.
