The Payment & Clearing Association of China (PCAC) has published a set of guidelines that regulate how payments providers making use of face recognition to process payments at the point of sale (POS) should manage the protection of consumer data... More
Consumers purchasing premium Sicilian blood oranges will be able to track the provenance of the product using a new system that combines NFC tags and sensors placed on each box of oranges with a blockchain-based tracking system... More
Huawei starts its mobile wallet service Huawei Pay in Pakistan — Technology Times — “Huawei has launched its mobile wallet service Huawei Pay in Pakistan in cooperation with UnionPay International and National Bank of Pakistan, making it the fourth market where Huawei Pay has been made available, following China, Russia and Hong Kong.”
A survey of more than 150,000 Chinese digital payment users has found that two-thirds have come across deceptive QR codes and 40.8% have had their codes surreptitiously forwarded to other people in the past year... More
WeChat Pay operator Tencent is working with China UnionPay on the adoption of a common QR code that will allow merchants to use the same code to accept payments from both companies’ mobile payment services, Caixin Global reports... More
QR code scams rise in China, putting e-payment security in spotlight — South China Morning Post — “By replacing legitimate merchants’ codes with malevolent copies, fraudsters can gain access to consumers’ data and even raid their bank accounts… According to one senior official and technology expert, almost a quarter of Trojans — malicious programs disguised as benign software – and other viruses are transmitted though QR codes.”
China’s central bank likely to pilot digital currency in cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou — Coindesk — “The People’s Bank of China is said to be preparing to launch pilots for its digital currency in at least two major cities. The tests are likely to include the participation of state-owned partners. These comprise the ‘Big Four’ commercial banks — the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China — and three telcos: China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.”
China’s subways embrace face-scan payments despite privacy concerns — AsiaOne — “Since the service began trials in September, nearly 200,000 commuters in Zhengzhou have elected to authorise face-scan payments using a local metro service app… While Zhengzhou is among dozens of Chinese cities to introduce such trials, it is the first to deploy the service across its entire subway network.”
Government asks SenseTime to lead plans for national facial recognition standards — Caixin Global — “The working group, which also includes Tencent, Xiaomi, and Ant Financial, is overseen by the National Information Technology Standardization Technical Committee (NITS), which is in turn affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It will also promote the further formulation of facial recognition standards at an international level.”
China mobile payments maintain rapid growth in Q3 — Xinhua — “Banks in the country processed 27.27bn mobile payment transactions in the period, up 61.05% year on year, said the People’s Bank of China in a report. The value of these transactions increased by 31.52% from the same period of last year to 86.11tn yuan (about US$12.2tn). Meanwhile, online payment transactions by the non-banking institutions were valued at 63.99tn yuan in Q3, up 23.04% year on year.”
Tencent, the owner of Chinese mobile payments provider WeChat Pay, has announced that it is working with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB to enable cardholders to connect their payment cards to WeChat Pay and then use the platform to make mobile payments when visiting China... More
Tourists visiting China can now use a version of Alipay designed specifically for international travellers to make mobile payments during their trip, Alipay has announced... More
Pay with your face system coming to Canada, but not everyone is on board — Yahoo Finance — “Ryan Li, Foodymart’s executive manager, sees the technology as an opportunity to grow his company’s business by attracting new customers, as well as cutting down on checkout times. Li also said between 50% and 60% of Foodymart customers have lived in China, and he expects most of them have previously interacted with a facial recognition payment system.”
A face recognition-based biometric payments system installed at 1,000 7-Eleven outlets in southern China last May has been adopted by 10% of the convenience store’s customers, the retailer has told Nikkei Asian Review... More
China remains the country with by far the highest mobile payments adoption rate, with 81.1% of smartphone owners making use of the technology, eMarketer reports... More
Face-scanning metro check-in and payment launched in central China — Xinhua — “Zhengzhou Metro in central China’s Henan Province has ushered in the face-scanning era, as a new check-in and payment system based on facial recognition was launched on Friday… It is the first face-scanning metro check-in and payment system in the country launched along a full metro line, providing passengers with a better experience of quick pass access and automatic ticket buying.”
There are now more than 200 million users of the UnionPay mobile payments app, the China-based payments network reports, and more than 3m merchants outside mainland China now accept UnionPay mobile payments... More
In depth: The fight for dominance in China’s mobile payment market — Caixin Global — “Under the plan, by the end of 2021 all merchants will be able to use one universal barcode to facilitate transactions through different payment service providers, including banks, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay. Currently, payment providers issue different barcodes that can be used only on their own services.”
Alipay and its local e-wallet partners now collectively serve 1.2 billion users globally, Ant Financial has revealed, up 20% since the end of December 2018 and 260% over the past three years... More
China has ‘no timetable’ for the launch of its digital currency, the governor of the country’s central bank has revealed... More
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