Alipay's Payment Face Scanners Add Beautifying Filters in China
“We are going to make you look even prettier.”
E-wallets and mobile payment solutions have proliferated in China for quite some time now, reaching to a point where consumers can simply have their faces scanned to verify payments. However, even with such high tech services, users are still not quite happy with the facial recognition systems now in place. According to a recent poll from one of China’s news portals Sina Technology, 60 percent of respondents feel that they look uglier in the face scan cameras than their own cameras when taking selfies. In response to this, Alibaba‘s e-wallet department Alipay has launched all-new face scanners with beautifying technology.
The announcement came on Tuesday via Alipay’s Weibo when the company said that it has added beauty filters into its face scanners. “We are going to make you look even prettier than with a beauty camera. I bet you’ll be impressed,” the company wrote. The new feature is set to roll out in retail stores all across China that are equipped with the technology within a week of the announcement.
The change may not come as a big surprise. Chasing beauty has been a trend in China for a while now. In 2016, the massively popular beautifying app Meitu became listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and just recently plastic surgery marketplace So-Young raised $180 million USD from its Nasdaq public listing.
In other tech news, Apple may be ditching the not-so-well-received butterfly keyboard for its next generation of MacBooks.
