Tech giants in China who popularized QR codes in their mobile payments applications are now moving away from the app-based payment method to something even more portable: your face.
Merchants from supermarkets to bakeries have adopted facial recognition payments technology from Alibaba-affiliated Ant Financial and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to make the payments process as frictionless as possible. One of the reason for the adoption of facial recognition - it has the potential to bring in a whole new wave of less tech-savvy users, such as the elderly or those who struggle to read and write.
While China is pushing on this for its payment system, several cities in the US has passed laws to ban the use of facial recognition by local agencies, such as the city’s transport authority, or law enforcement on the basis that it is incompatible with a healthy democracy and that residents deserve a voice in decisions about high-tech surveillance.
Like the old English saying - One man's meat is another man's poison.
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