Tencent launches palm payments in Beijing, allowing metro passengers to pay with the wave of a hand

WeChat users who register their palm prints can pay for rides on Beijing’s airport express line using only their hands at designated turnstiles
The technology joins other biometric payment methods like facial recognition, which have raised privacy concerns in China in recent years

Tencent

Iris Dengin Shenzhen

Published: 5:30pm, 22 May 2023

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Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings is allowing Beijing metro passengers to pay for rides using only their palms in a new service launched in China’s capital city through its WeChat Pay service, referred to as Weixin Pay domestically.

Starting from Sunday, users who enrol in the palm-recognition service can pay for rides on the Daxing Airport Express Line by holding their hands over a scanner at metro station turnstiles. Recognition of a unique palm print triggers an automatic payment through the user’s WeChat account.

To register, palm prints must be taken at a designated machine at a metro station. Passengers can then use their palms at turnstiles with a green circle, Tencent said in a statement on Monday.

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The technology relies on recognition of both surface-level palm prints and the hand’s veins, according to Tencent. It was developed by the company’s YouTu artificial intelligence lab.

“In our aim to improve efficiency and greatly simplify user experience, we are making new technology more user-friendly for the elderly and accessible to people with disabilities,” the company said in the statement.

Tencent said it is gradually rolling out palm payments for use in other settings including offices, campuses, retail outlets and restaurants.

The new payment method drew heated discussions on social media, as many netizens have grown increasingly privacy-conscious in a country where biometric data theft is a common occurrence and facial recognition payments have been available for years.

“Is it really safe to collect biometric data?” asked one user on the microblogging platform Weibo in one of the more popular comments on the topic.

Some people said they expect it to be more convenient than current payment methods. “It’s quite useful when my phone runs out of battery and I can still pay with my hand,” another user commented.

The service is currently only available to residents in mainland China who have completed real name verification, a requirement for WeChat Pay.

Other big tech companies have also been working on palm payments. Alibaba Group Holding, China’s largest e-commerce firm and owner of the South China Morning Post, is working on similar technology for its competing Alipay service, a patent filing shows, as reported by media outlet Tech Planet in February.

WeChat Pay and Alipay together account for more than 90 per cent of the mobile payments market in mainland China.

In the US, e-commerce giant Amazon.com launched its own hand-scan technology called Amazon One in offline stores in 2020, later expanding it to various locations of its grocery chain Whole Foods.