The tech subsidiary of Chinese insurance giant Ping An Group has teamed up with fintech developer One Connect (金融壹账) to launch “blink payments” that employ artificial intelligence for facial recognition purposes.
The facial recognition technology has already been deployed by Danyang Rural Commercial Bank (丹阳农商银行) in Jiangsu province, making it quicker and more convenient for customers to make payments at supermarkets, fruit and vegetable markets, cinemas and on public transportation, as well as to withdraw cash from ATM’s.
Users only need to submit their facial information via an app in order to be able to make “blink payments” at participating vendors, with the payments systems processing data acquired via facial scans by means of Ping An’s cloud computing platform.
According to an executive from Danyng Rural the project will see the participation of 1,000 commercial vendors and over 100,000 users by the end of the year, with these figures expected to rose to over 3,000 vendors and more than 300,000 users in 2019
An executive from Ping An Technology said to domestic media that facial recognition is a form of bio-identification that can increase the accuracy of customer verification, and greatly increase the security as well as convenience of financial services provision.
“We hope to be able to assist more industries to implement smart facial recognition applications, raising the convenience of operations in multiple sectors, and creating more convenient and secure AI applications.”
Shenzhen-headquartered Ping An Technology is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ping An Group that focuses on the fintech applications of AI, the blockchain, cloud computing and other emerging technologies.
Shanghai-based One Connect specialises in the provision of solution plans to small and medium-sized financial institutions that are based on the use of AI, the blockchain, cloud computing and bio-recognition.
As of the end of the first quarter of 2018, the company had provided its fintech solution plans to over 420 banks and more than 2,100 non-bank financial institutions.
