KFC now lets you pay with a smile in China

If you happen to be at KFC’s new ‘KPRO' restaurant in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, you won't have to bother much to make the payment for your sumptuous meal- Just smile and you'll be done. Well, it isn't the case that the person at the counter will waive off your bill seeing your smile rather a partnership between Alibaba's Ant Financial and KFC that leverages a new Smile to Pay technology.

The facial-recognition payment technology uses a 3D camera mounted at the top of a touchscreen kiosk where you place your order; enter your phone number and let it snap a photo of you, and your meal is paid for through your Alipay account.

KFC was targeted for the debut as it is a subsidiary of Yum China, one of Alibaba's major investments. “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,” says Jidong Chen, head of biometric identification technology at Ant Financial.

According to Ant Financial, the algorithm can detect shadows and other features to test if the person standing in front of the camera is actually a person, and not a photo or video used to trick the payment system.