Gone are the days when we used to pay using traditional cash or via credit cards. Nowadays, we make our transactions with the help of technological advancements such as internet banking and cryptocurrencies in some cases. But this has been taken to a more advanced level. We can make payments by using our face. That is, a transaction is possible by recognizing faces using the latest technology.

 

This technology has made its advancements throughout the world. But it is more trending and successful in China because of the attitude towards privacy. China has a more centralized database which comprises of ids and photographs. Initially, this was implemented to identify the criminals from the criminal database. But a Chinese tech startup called Face++ which was valued at a billion dollars made it possible to make payments too!

 

The foundation pillar for this fascinating technology is artificial intelligence and machine learning. A startup founded in China made this innovation and has successfully implemented to make authorized payments. At one KFC restaurant in China, payments for food is done by using face recognition which is made possible by Ant financial (Alibaba’s affiliate). According to a claim, this upcoming technology is going to cover major areas such as medical stores and public transport if it proves to efficient and dependable.

 

This software analyses more than 600 facial features and is supported by a 3-D camera and a strong facial recognition algorithm. The best part of this system is that one cannot fool this algorithm by showing them the videos or photographs of another person. The algorithm can detect whether the face is present in reality or not! First, the face is captured, then the features are extracted. After this, the features are compared to the other pictures of the person and finally, the person is recognized.

 

Apart from Alibaba, Baidu has also started to test a similar kind of prototype in Beijing. Baidu’s face recognition software also defeated humans in a competition to recognize adult faces from their baby pictures. This shows the accuracy of this technology and how much we can depend on this. Other Chinese tech companies are also putting their feet in this domain. Technological critics claim that this face recognizing software has been aided by public information database and pictures of citizens present on different social networking sites.

 

The major advantage of this upcoming technology is that now, people don’t need to take their cards or wallets everywhere to make payments. This will also reduce the fraud transactions as the algorithm is very efficient and it is very difficult to fool it. This technology has automated the transactions and made it very accurate and less redundant to mistakes. This is more secure as compared to traditional methods involving passwords.

 

But it must be noted that this technology can also be used for controlling us as it uses our private data. So, we must ensure that it is being used for health purposes and the centralized data is in secure hands as this will be a paradise for hackers if this goes into wrong hands.