Until recently Alibaba was not as well known in the United States as other companies of its size and importance. But recently Alibaba made big news by seeking an initial public offering of its stock in the United States. It raised a staggering $25 billion making it the largest IPO of all time. By some measures, Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in the world.
Last year $248 billion dollars in trades passed through Alibaba, more than Ebay and Amazon combined. So when they decide that biometrics are the way that they want their customers to identify themselves it means that a significant percentage of the world's commerce will become dependent upon biometric identification.
Alibaba to Use Biometrics to Say ‘Open Sesame’
Alibaba, the huge Chinese commerce
company that recently made waves with its IPO, is planning to
incorporate biometric security in its payment system, according to a
Wall Street Journal blog article by Juro Osawa. Alipay, the
e-commerce wing of the company, is currently enjoying great success
with its mobile payment app Alipay Wallet. With 190 million active
users, it’s easily the top mobile payment tool in China, and given
the Alibaba’s increasing profile on the international market, it
makes a lot of sense to come up with more advanced security
protocols.
At a recent press conference, a senior
director of Zhejian Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group,
which owns Alipay, explained that “biological identification will
become very important in the future” as customers’ real-world
identities become merged with their virtual identities. As such,
Alipay is looking into the possibilities of fingerprint scanning –
as Apple has done in anticipation of its Apple Pay platform – and
also facial recognition technology, for which it has teamed up with
Beijing-based software developer Megvii.
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