Please don’t tell external people.” In one photo posted online, a written warning states that photography of the device is prohibited.
#TENCENT CHINA WECHAT PAY MAUSKHARPALCNBC TRIAL#
They are likely still in the trial phase, as they are often shown alongside notes saying “trial location for WeChat palm print scan payment” or “Internal testing. The WeChat payment devices in these videos are iPad-sized white boxes with a screen showing instructions and a camera capturing the palm data. The tactic is similar to that of Amazon, which offered a $10 credit last year for users who enrolled in its palm-print checkout system, Amazon One. In most cases, WeChat offers a small discount, often less than 10 RMB ($1.37), for customers to try out the new feature and submit their palm-print data. That has changed a year later, as Tencent has been testing palm-print recognition devices for months in Shenzhen, the city where the company is headquartered, and Guangzhou, another megacity 65 miles away.Īs shown in social media videos uploaded as early as July, and which I first reported on earlier this month in my “China Report” newsletter, palm-print payment devices for Tencent’s WeChat Pay system are already being used in cafes, bakeries, and supermarkets. At the time, the company responded that it was only an internal research project and there was no plan to apply the tech in real-life settings.
In late 2021, Chinese media first reported Tencent was exploring a payment system that relied on scanning users’ palm prints. “So we look at this as a way for people to potentially save a couple of minutes in line at the price of their biometric privacy for the rest of their lives.” WeChat’s secret trials But you can’t change your palm print if that gets compromised,” says Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). When most retailers get hacked, at worst you have to change your credit card number. Indeed, analysts and privacy activists remain skeptical that palm-print recognition should be used in payments-and what would happen if they are. While Amazon was the first major tech company to officially deploy palm-print scanners in its brick-and-mortar stores in the US (it’s spread to nearly 180 locations since 2020), the tech could soon become ubiquitous across China thanks to WeChat Pay’s wide adoption in all types of stores WeChat Pay is already used by over 800 million individuals and 50 million vendors in China.īut even with palm-print recognition’s benefits, installation to such a ubiquitous extent would still come with privacy risks for consumers, not to mention practical complications.
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