CRFM Explores Fintech Trend: Facial Recognition Payment in China

HONG KONG, Nov. 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Facial recognition is springing up in payment industry of China in year 2019. The market continues to heat up after People's Bank of China announced to support exploration of facial recognition application in payment industry in August 2019. Various payment institutions (Union Pay, Alipay and WeChat Pay), POS hardware manufacturers, OEM mobile phone manufactures, etc have ambitiously followed this innovative payment trend and launched their own products.

Chain Relations Finance Media (CRFM) has noticed, in the current market, each payment institution (UnionPay, WeChat Pay and Alipay) has its own hardware device to process respective facial recognition payment. In other words, on top of existing hardware to process QR code payments, merchants need to install additionally three different devices to enable facial recognition payments of UnionPay, WeChat Pay and Alipay respectively. Unfortunately such development barrier poses a number of pain points to various participants:

1. Huge hardware cost pressure (to banks and merchants);
2. Cumbersome and unfriendly operation process (to merchants and users); 
3. Unnecessary setup space occupancy (to merchants).

In visiting various merchants and researching the situation of payment acceptance, CRFM has found some merchants having adopted one single hardware to complete facial recognition payments (UnionPay and WeChat Pay) and also QR code payments (UnionPay, WeChat Pay and Alipay). The hardware is provided by a local acquiring bank, and after diving deeper in the technology used by the bank, CRFM has discovered that the bank is using the middle software provided by Shenzhen Taotaogu Information Technology Co., Ltd. (SZ TTG) (ASX ticker : FTC).

Integrated Facial Recognition Payments Lead The Tide

CRFM has interviewed SZ TTG regarding its view and development in the payment trend in China. In early November 2019, SZ TTG is the first to launch an integrated facial recognition payment solution - "Flounder" using one single hardware to complete both facial recognition payments (UnionPay and WeChat Pay) and QR code payments (UnionPay, WeChat Pay and Alipay). "Flounder" offers stunning merits: (1) Saving hardware cost; (2) Streamlined operation/payment process; and (3) Less space occupancy.

CRFM realises that SZ TTG is currently serving more than 700 banks and over 5 million merchants in China by its patented T-Linx^TM Middle Software for banks. The T-Linx^TM powered banks export such fintech middle software capability to their various merchants, seamlessly connecting merchants' operation system with integrated payment solutions in low cost. Moreover, T-Linx^TM is furnished with consolidated transaction data with one unified statement and real-time data management (SaaS) for merchants, and many other state-of-art industry applications.

The promotion of the giant institutions/corporates, the follow-up of government supervision, the excitement of the industry, and the questioning of the public are all very similar to the market situation when the QR code payment was becoming popular. CRFM believes that integrated facial recognition payment will be the next development tide after QR code payment.