All these days we have seen payments made through cash, cheque, smartphones, bitcoins, online and via e-wallets and cryptocurrency. But can you imagine a tech which helps make payments through a simple smile?
Yes, what you’ve read it is right!
China has soon started to embrace a new payment technology which allows shoppers to make payment via a smile or just a turn of their head. To make it possible, customers are allowed to stand before POS(Point of sale) machines equipped with a camera and are clicked before the desk.
The image is then matched with a pre-determined facial image stored in a digital payment system linked to the bank account. And after authentication, the sale transaction gets passed on and the money from the shopper’s bank account gets transferred to the account of the shop owner or merchant.
So, no need to carry a smartphone or plastic card with a magnetic strip to swipe. Just go into the mall/shop, shop as much as you want and just pay with a smile.
If this seems to be innovative to you. Then you need to check out the next.
Amazon Retail which can be touted as the world’s largest online shopping store is testing a new tech where you can make a payment by just showing your hand. It’s an idea taken from Apple’s Touch ID to authorize payments but is different from the regular fingerprint scanners found on regular devices.
A source from Amazon says that the new payment tech which is still in the testing phase will require an in-depth computer vision and depth geometry to recognize the size and shape of a human hand. The possibilities of such payments are still biased. But developments are taking place at a fast pace to make the tech available to US Populace by shopping season of 2022.
Going further, Facebook which opted out of the TAG suggestion feature on a default note recently is all set to reinstate it on users consent. So, by default, the new feature which has been part of your social media experience from the past 19 months will be turned off for you until you instruct it otherwise.
Perhaps that is what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially suggested to all the users of the social networking site on Tuesday-possibly trying to paint his company with a more privacy-conscious image. And that too after FTC penalizing it with a $5 billion fine for violating consumer privacy rights by using facial tech on users without their respective consent.
