Ever think that paying for fast food can be cumbersome or annoying? Afraid to lose your credit card in the anxious shuffle to get it back in your wallet after paying? (No? Just me? Okay…) Anyway, you don’t have to worry about any of that with KFC’s new payment method: ‘Smile To Pay.’
Yep. It’s exactly what it sounds like; you pay for your meal with a smile. The method is being tried out in Hangzhou, China, utilizing facial recognition technology to check the identity of the patron. The process takes only a few seconds, but then you have to enter your phone number to protect against fraud.
You can check out how the technology works here:
So really, it’s not just a smile that you need, but it’s still an interesting method! Also, it looks like it doesn’t matter what you wear or how you have your hair—the camera still recognizes you. It’s… a little creepy, to be honest.
The company behind the biometric identification technology is Ant Financial. The head of the company, Jidong Chen, had this to say about the fancy tech:
Taking the facial-recognition payment technology offline was no easy task.
On how we detect when someone’s photo is being manipulated when someone is falsely impersonating another person — we prevent this by merging software and hardware by linking sophisticated algorithms with the 3D camera.
We can prevent biometric spoofing.
So, do you think it’ll catch on? It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure how well it’ll work widescale. We’ll just have to wait and see, then, I guess!
Speaking of interesting fast food practices, ever wonder what happened to the McDonald’s pizza? Then, you can check it out here.
Featured Image Via
