Ant Financial will launch Face ID for package pickups

On September 14, Alipay and Cainiao Global held the Global Logistics and Supply Chain Conference (GLSC) in Shanghai, and announced that they will provide services for SMEs form the most basic payment to marketing, credit, and finance businesses. At the same time, the Ant Financial will use face recognition technology in the logistics industry, so that its customers can pick up package with face ID tech within 5 seconds at select smart courier cabinets.

At present, Easy Delivery, the cabinet manufacturer, pilots the first batch of cabinets supporting face ID tech in Shanghai.

The operation process is that customers receive the pickup notice, select “Face ID for package” in the intelligent delivery service operation interface, and wait for the system to go into face recognition; the door will open automatically after the successful recognition, and customers can pick up their packages. The whole process avoids the cumbersome process of entering the verification code. Customers need to set this function on Alipay App at the first time.

Ant Financial’s program will begin with five pilot smart courier stations located in Shanghai. Zou Jianhua, CEO of the Easy Delivery, said that “from the perspective of industry development, there will be more than 10,000 smart courier cabinets with the Face ID tech in the next 3 years.”

Although picking up package with face ID is quiet convenient, some users may doubt that in view of the light and pedestrians, the face ID function can still work at the outdoor cabinets? Chen Jidong, biometric identification technology leader of the Ant Financial, responded that “users always pick up their packages in the morning or night, so the technology should really be sensitive to the light. We will combine both the hardware and software to solve and optimize this problem.”

Previously, citizens in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen can “deal with government affairs with the face recognition technology” supported by the Ant Financial. Users can check the housing accumulation fund and declare the individual income tax by scanning their faces. On September 1, Alipay announced that customers can “pay with smile” without their phones at the KFC’s KPRO restaurant, which was also the first commercial pilot in all over the world.

The intelligent courier cabinets are another commercial application of the face recognition after the “smile to pay”. In the future, users can not only scan their face to pick up packages, but also send parcels. The technology is sure to save time—no need to submit ID Card and avoid other cumbersome processes. Courier delivery’s work will also use the technology to enhance the efficiency. It can also implement the requirements of the national real-name system in the logistics industry.

This article originally appeared in 36Kr and was translated by Pandaily.

Click here to read the original Chinese article.