Blink and the elderly get their pensions easier

A pension revolution has been rolled out to help up to 260,000 retired people in Shenzhen.

Traditional fingerprint identification has been replaced by "face recognition technology".

The project has been launched by Alipay, the digital payment app owned by Alibaba Holding Group Ltd's affiliate, Ant Financial Services Group.

Retired people just have to log on to their Alipay account, look at the screen and blink to activate a pension payment.

They can then transfer the money into their bank accounts or keep it in their Alipay accounts.

Last month, Shenzhen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau linked up with Alipay to launch the face recognition technology.

"The technology will better serve the public and improve service efficiency of the government," Alipay said in a statement. "The whole process only lasts 10 seconds."

The accuracy of face recognition is 99.6 percent and is proving popular in the financial and security sectors, the company pointed out.

In addition to Shenzhen, Zhejiang has become the first province to use face recognition technology for tax purposes.

By the end of March, 120,000 tax declarations had been made using the Alipay system. Zhejiang officials stressed that the technology easily proves the identities of tax payers, which in turn saves time when visiting the department.

"This technology is gradually being utilized in a number of public services fields," Alipay said in a statement.

"It is expected that it will be applied to more cities, which will benefit more elderly people."

In 2004, Alipay was launched by Alibaba as PayPal-style online payment system.

Since then, it has been rolled into Alibaba's Ant Financial Services, which has expanded into an internet financial empire, offering a range of services from online banking to credit ratings.

Back in 2015, Alipay started working alongside Megvii Technology Inc, an internet startup, which focused on face recognition technology.

They jointly developed Smile to Pay, which allowed customers to buy goods by simply scanning their face.

Zhuang Qiange contributed to the story.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 06/08/2017 page15)