Pay by showing your face instead of an ATM card

 Sarah Stewart enters a small Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles and orders a tortilla sandwich.

To pay, she shows a picture of her face on a screen at the cashier's counter. To make a tip, she quickly makes a victory sign with her fingers in front of the screen. This completes the process of paying for food.

The whole process takes less than five seconds and is complete without any contact. Second, Sarah Stewart did not have to have a cell phone or a bank card. Nor any other kind of identity. They did not even have to enter their PIN number to complete the payment process. So, sir, welcome to the world of the future that pays by face recognition.

You may think this is a scene from a science fiction movie, but such payments are already being made millions of times a day in different cities of China. The technology is now being introduced in the United States and other countries, such as Denmark and Nigeria. The question now is, will we all be able to use it in the next few years? And should we be concerned about data security and privacy issues while using this technology?

Sarah Stewart, an 18-year-old university student, says she has no such fears. "I think the pace of technology is so fast that people don't think twice about using it. Our phones read our faces and our faces are already on the internet, so I don't think it makes any difference. It's faster, easier and safer. And you don't have to worry about leaving your phone or cards at home. "

She pays through facial recognition through the American tech startup app 'Pop ID'. You sign up by uploading a picture of your face through its website, which is stored in the firm's 'cloud-based system'. You then link your account to your bank card.

Alternatively, you can use Pop IT for a few hand gestures. Stewart has set the thumb mark at 10% for the tip, the victory or peace mark with the fingers at 15% and the shaka or 'call me' mark at 20%.

Pop ID is headquartered in Los Angeles and now uses about 70 restaurants and cafes in various US cities, most notably on the West Coast. "Our view is that using your face for payment is no different than using your phone," says John Miller, chief executive of Pop ID. It's just another way of identifying yourself. (Digital taken at the time of sale) The image is deleted immediately, and the data is not shared with anyone.

Instead, they say, it's safer than paying with a mobile phone because the phone can track your location at any time via GPS. He added that Pop ID does not store the original images but unique mathematical maps of the facial vectors.

Using Pop ID nowadays requires temporarily lowering your face mask, but the company says it is updating its system to avoid having to do so in the future.

Another student in Guangzhou, China, some 7,000 miles away, has face-to-face payment technology in mind. Ling (who does not want to be named) says this is now the only way to buy food from a vending machine in the Sun Yat-sen University residential block.

Unlike Sarah, who lives in Los Angeles, Ling is not happy with the use of technology. She is concerned that it is increasingly interfering with her daily life and that is why she is reluctant to use it. "Tech is like a tidal wave and there is no way you can swim in the opposite direction," she says. But I still have a position, and I will stick to it as long as I can. " If technology is really a tide, then the rollout of face recognition technology in China is nothing short of a tsunami.

About 98% of mobile payments in China are made through just two apps. One is AliPay (owned by Alibaba) and the other is VChatPay. And both are in the race to bring a face recognition system across the country.

Ali Pay will spend three billion yuan (42 420 million) on it in three years, and according to Chinese state media, 760 million people will use the facial recognition payment system by next year.

Wang Bang of Luoyang Vocational College of Science and Technology in Hainan Province says the outbreak has been exacerbated by the corona virus epidemic. He says Kodak's experience in China has played a key role in bringing people into the facial recognition system. He added that the software and camera system is so advanced that it is impossible to manipulate it, such as stealing someone's picture. This technology can also differentiate between twins.

But will this technology come to the rest of the world? Brett King, an expert on banking and future payment systems, believes that this will happen if governments do not decide to stop it. Brett King, author of the book Banking 4.0, says that accurate measurements and features of your face are actually more secure than your account passwords. Facial payments are part of a growing digital identity structure. I understand the concerns about privacy, but the reality is that a digital identity (face-to-face) structure is essential for safety and security. (Digital) Payments, transactions and services have become more and more a part of our lives and our world, and this will definitely require biometrics, because passwords are not so secure.

Brett King added that many Apple phone users are happily using face recognition technology to access their handsets, and the face payment system is an extension of that. However, he says US regulators may consider the technology. Because this is happening at a time when there is growing concern about facial recognition systems.

Some Democrats in the US Congress want a bill re-introduced this year to block the technology used by federal agencies such as the FBI to identify suspects. And there are concerns that a facial recognition system is being used in China to identify people belonging to the Uyghur ethnic minority.

John Miller of Pop ID says he is in talks with major card companies. They are said to see facial recognition payments as a way to bypass mobile phone apps like Apple Pay and Google Pay. "They don't want to rely on the phone, because Apple is a company that can threaten them," he said. So the idea of ​​moving the payment system directly from the card to the face seems very appealing to them.

Still, Miller acknowledges that paying by facial recognition is an idea some people will never accept. "A segment of the population will never adopt it, no matter how much logic you put into comparing it to the phone. Because it's just a psychological problem for them