You Will Soon Be Able To Pay Your Subway Fare With Your Face in China (scmp.com)

China has led the world in adoption of smartphone-based mobile payments to the point where the central bank had to remind merchants not to discriminate against cash. The next phase of development may be to pay with your face. South Morning China Post: In Shenzhen, the local subway operator is testing various advanced technologies backed by the ultra-fast 5G network, including facial-recognition ticketing. At the Futian station, instead of presenting a ticket or scanning a QR bar code on their smartphones, commuters can scan their faces on a tablet-sized screen mounted on the entrance gate and have the fare automatically deducted from their linked accounts. Currently in a trial mode, the facial-recognition ticketing service could in future help improve the efficiency of handling the up to 5 million rides per day on the city's subway network. Shenzhen Metro did not elaborate when it will roll out the facial payment service. The introduction of facial recognition-and-payment services to the public transit system marks another step by China toward integrating facial recognition and other artificial intelligence-based technology into everyday life in the world's most populous nation. Consumers can already pay for fried chicken at KFC in China with its "Smile to Pay" facial recognition system, first introduced at an outlet in Hangzhou in January 2017.

Comments

Only if you can still ride it.

[alvinrod]

Sure you can pay with your face, unless your social credit score is too low. Then it will probably just signal the authorities to come round you up and send you away. Eventually the camps will be done processing all of the Uyghurs and they'll need some new grist for the mill.

Re:Only if you can still ride it.

[drinkypoo]

Sure you can pay with your face, unless your social credit score is too low. Then it will probably just signal the authorities to come round you up and send you away.

Then you can pay with all of your body parts.

Re:Only if you can still ride it.

[dryriver]

They don't have to send you anywhere - ALL of China is being transformed into an open air prison. The Chinese Communist Party exists first and foremost to OPPRESS its citizens. You don't have to do that in a labor camp - these commie-gays probably get the same kick out of just surveilling 1 Billion people in everything they do every day. Well done Apple & Co. You moving your manufacturing Dollars to China has trapped 1 Billion people inside one big fucking Panopticon.

Re:Only if you can still ride it.

[eaglesrule]

It's going to be interesting to see if we can actually manage to avoid inescapable tyranny, when the Chinese have already beaten us to it. With the way that leftists keep getting elected that actively seek to make gun ownership and free speech illegal, there's no way to be sure.

Re:Only if you can still ride it.

[mentil]

Dictators tend to feel anxious that their close officials, or the evil group du jour, are going to betray/usurp them; this is the typical cause of purges.
Now scale this up to a dictatorial government, that is afraid much LARGER groups (say, all the Maoists) are going to roll out the guillotines, and the oppression gets much larger in scope and time scale.

Oppression is a side-effect of the #1 bureaucracy goal: continuity of the bureaucracy. Anything that threatens the CCP is considered an "existential threat" by them. The typical way to defeat these things is to have them implode due to power vacuum, although Thailand probably has a better model of having a non-violent coup every 20 years or so.

Re: Only if you can still ride it.

[AHuxley]

AC only if your social credit is good. Once that gets too low, no passport, no flights, no rail. No passport, no international travel.
Try a domestic holiday?
No good hotels, fast rail in China will accept a low social credit score.

Re:Wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

One guy gets a bill for 5 million subway rides a day.

Re:Good climate...

[omnichad]

Wearing baklavas gets messy - especially if they're made with honey.

Re:Facial recognition, stock is up

[Kjella]

You don't have to speculate a lot, fingerprint/iris etc. is point identification where the person wants to identify. With facial recognition you can people over time from camera to camera. If you got them positively identified at one point you can track both forwards and backwards. If you got a superzoom you can do it from a great distance. If you're the Chinese they can probably cross reference with cell phone towers, electronic payments etc. to narrow down the number of likely people from 1.4 billion to a few thousands. Like Facebook they'll probably build shadow profiles on all the unknown people, only better.

Re:China Proudly Leads The Way To The New World Or

[AHuxley]

The NSA and GCQH have the same systems to detect social changes in a person.
They just don't tell the world about it.
The West has an informal interview to see what a person is doing what they do.
Should that fail uniformed police talk to a persons boss and work colleagues.
Still not change to a persons political views?
The interviews become criminal and very formal.
Bank accounts stop working.
Lawyers suggest better lawyers. But as the bank account is frozen...
Finally the SAS is used without any comment when needed as its was in Ireland.
The difference is China stops more of your everyday use of services to ensure a person having problems has more time to study more Communism.
No hotels, no travel, no good housing, no loans until the person is a better citizen.