Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings is allowing Beijing metro passengers to pay for rides using only their palms in a new service launched in China’s capital city through its WeChat Pay service, referred to as Weixin Pay domestically.
Starting from Sunday, users who enroll in the palm-recognition service can pay for rides on the Daxing Airport Express Line by holding their hands over a scanner at metro station turnstiles.
Recognition of a unique palm print triggers an automatic payment through the user’s WeChat account.
To register, palm prints must be taken at a designated machine at a metro station. Passengers can then use their palms at turnstiles with a green circle, Tencent said in a statement on Monday.
The technology relies on the recognition of both surface-level palm prints and the hand’s veins, according to Tencent.
It was developed by the company’s YouTu artificial intelligence lab.
Tencent said it is gradually rolling out palm payments for use in other settings including offices, campuses, retail outlets, and restaurants.
The new payment method drew heated discussions on social media, as many netizens have grown increasingly privacy-conscious in a country where biometric data theft is a common occurrence and facial recognition payments have been available for years.
The service is currently only available to residents in mainland China who have completed real name verification, a requirement for WeChat Pay.
Other big tech companies have also been working on palm payments. Alibaba Group Holding, China’s largest e-commerce firm and owner of the South China Morning Post, is working on similar technology for its competing Alipay service, a patent filing shows, as reported by media outlet Tech Planet in February.
WeChat Pay and Alipay together account for more than 90 percent of the mobile payments market in mainland China.
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