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China's Alibaba Has a New Payment System That Lets Virtual Reality Shoppers Pay By Nodding (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the pay-by-nodding dept.

If providing your credit card details (or a few clicks) is too much a hassle for you, China's Alibaba may have a solution. The company today demonstrated a payment service called VR Pay, that allows virtual reality shoppers to pay for things just by nodding their heads. Reuters reports: VR Pay, the new payment system, is part of Alibaba's efforts to capitalize on the latest technology in online shopping. In 2015, for example, it introduced a facial recognition technology for Alipay mobile payments service advertised as "pay with a selfie." The VR payment technology means people using virtual reality goggles to browse virtual reality shopping malls will be able pay for purchases without taking off the goggles. They can just nod or look instead. Lin Feng, who is in charge of Ant Financial's incubator F Lab that has been developing the payment service over the past few months, told Reuters: "It is very boring to have to take off your goggles for payment. With this, you will never need to take out your phone."

4 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Now that's really stupid.. by epyT-R · · Score: 2

    Yes, lets make transaction authorization as ambiguous as possible. I wouldn't want any of my financial streams associated with any of this.

  2. Uhmmm... Pay by nodding??? by mark-t · · Score: 2

    How's that supposed to work? Do you tap into the kinetic energy produced by nodding and generate some material amount of work that you can translate into capital, or what?

    Or did they mean to say that you can *authorize* payments just by nodding?

    Because that's not at all what the headline, summary, or even the article says.

    Words matter. I don't know why people don't just say what they mean instead of making ambiguous statements that don't mean anything sensible.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  3. Douglas Adams was prophetic! by zugmeister · · Score: 2

    "Whatever you do, don't nod!" If I remember right Ford told Arthur this just before they entered the VR history lesson on Deep Thought and the ultimate answer. It was inviting them to bow their heads in payment or some such...

  4. H2G2 by lgftsa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Do not," called out Slartibartfast floating past again, and fiddling furiously with the thing that he had stuck into the wall of the Room of Informational Illusions and which was in fact still stuck there, "agree to buy anything at this point."