In China, KFC customers will pay by facial scan

In a sign of the unabashed confidence Chinese businesses are placing in digital technology, a number of companies have rolled out facial recognition tech solutions in the last few months. Among them is a service being launched with a KFC branch in Hangzhou, China by a financial spinoff of Alibaba that gives customers using the store's ordering kiosk the option of paying by facial scan. When Alibaba founder Jack Ma first demonstrated the technology at a conference in 2015, he referred to it as “smile to pay.”