Scan code payment has been developed and popularized in China Is there still a market prospect for palm payment?

QR code payment has developed rapidly in China

Whether there is still a market prospect
for palm payment

◎ Zuo Pengfei

With the accelerated penetration and expansion of digital technology into different fields of economy and society, people's consumption concepts and consumption behaviors are also quietly changing, and the diversification of consumer demand and consumption scenarios has been realized. In the context of digital consumption innovation, users are constantly putting forward new and higher requirements for payment experience, forcing enterprises to continuously enrich and change mobile payment functions, and palm payment has emerged.

Recently, WeChat's opening of the palm payment function has aroused widespread attention and discussion. It is reported that users can realize palm payment on devices that support face payment, only need to bind a personal WeChat account, enter the palm pattern, and point the palm at the scanning area of the payment device when consuming, and complete the payment after confirmation.

At present, the mobile payment market is mature enough, scanning code payment has a high degree of convenience, why are there new payment methods? What are the current types of biometric payments? Does the emerging palm payment have market prospects in the future? How to protect the privacy of users with the continuous enrichment of biometric payment methods?

Biometric payments may be the mainstream of the future

Since 2010, in the context of the rapid development of the mobile Internet, mobile payment has maintained a rapid growth trend, widely integrated into people's daily life, and evolved to form a new payment system.

At present, mobile payment has become an important way to continuously release the inclusive effect of financial technology. According to the data released by People's Bank of China, the current mobile payment penetration rate in China has reached 86%.

In real life, mobile payment has been able to meet the needs of users, why are there still emerging payment methods? The reasons for this are mainly reflected in two aspects.

From the perspective of enterprise competition, mobile payment is not only a huge market size, but more importantly, it contains great commercial value as a commercial entrance. According to a report released by the Payment and Clearing Association of China, the scale of online payment users in China has reached 2021 million in 9. Therefore, enterprises in the fields of financial technology and digital technology have launched a layout on the mobile payment end, and continuously strengthened technological research and development and innovation, in order to enhance the market competitiveness and industry influence of enterprises.

From the perspective of user experience, customer experience is the driving force behind the innovation of mobile payment methods. With the accelerated penetration and expansion of digital technology into different fields of economy and society, people's consumption concepts and consumption behaviors are also quietly changing, and the diversification of consumer demand and consumption scenarios has been realized. In the context of digital consumption innovation, users continue to put forward higher requirements for payment experience, forcing enterprises to continuously enrich and change mobile payment functions.

With the continuous evolution of the trend of personal biometric dataization, the integration of biometric technology and mobile payment continues to deepen, and biometric payment, including palm payment, has gradually become an emerging form of payment after digital passwords and QR codes.

From the perspective of existing payment methods, in addition to palm payment, biometric payment mainly includes 5 methods. The first is fingerprint payment, which is paid by identifying and reading the epidermal lines of the fingers. The second is face payment, which is paid by reading face features through recognition. The third is voiceprint payment, which is paid by identifying and reading sound characteristics. The fourth is iris payment, which is paid by identifying and reading the iris features of the eye. The fifth is intravenous payment, which is paid by identifying and reading the lines of the finger vein and palmar vein.

In general, the field of biometric payment technology shows a diversified development trend, various biometric payment technologies have begun to be developed, and some technologies have been put into practical application, but the technical complexity and application degree of different payment methods are quite different. At present, QR code payment is still the mainstream mobile payment method in the field of mass consumption, and biometric payment methods have not yet achieved large-scale application. The reason is that from the perspective of the requirements of small high-frequency payment scenarios, the key to promoting the industrialization of biometric payment is to meet the user's requirements of high security, high convenience and high stability, while the existing biometric payment methods still have certain limitations.

The practical significance of palm payment has gradually become prominent

In fact, palm payments are nothing new. Technology companies such as Amazon and Alipay have been deeply engaged in this field for many years, and WeChat has become the initiator of large-scale commercialization of domestic palm payment. In the future, with the deepening of the convergence of digitalization and aging, the practical significance of palm payment will gradually become prominent.

First, it is more in line with the high security requirements of high-frequency payment. At present, the widely used fingerprint payment is mainly to identify the epidermal pattern of the reading finger, while the palm payment is to identify and read the palm and cardiovascular lines, which not only avoids the contact and pressing of the screen, but also improves the security and anti-counterfeiting of mobile payment.

Second, it is more in line with the public's social psychology. Compared with face payment, palm payment is a payment method with stronger user initiative, which not only avoids the discomfort caused by face brushing in some sensitive scenarios, but also avoids the problem of face being identified and used without knowing it. Palm payment has higher privacy and accuracy, and is more in line with the public's social psychology.

The third is to be more suitable for aging product design needs. Compared with scanning QR codes and other mobile payment methods, palm payment expands and improves the new path of contactless payment, as long as the palm print is entered, the payment transaction can also be completed on the palm machine without a mobile phone, which greatly improves the convenience and recognition rate of the payment process, so it can solve the electronic payment problems of the elderly to a large extent.

Fourth, it is more suitable for the development needs of virtual reality scenes. At present, the meta-universe boom has faded and gradually entered a period of rational development, and virtual reality technology and industry are still moving forward. Gesture interaction is one of the main ways to realize virtual reality/augmented reality wearable devices to interact with the real world, and handheld virtual reality/augmented reality devices such as data gloves, somatosensory handles, and smart rings are closely related to palm movement, so palm payment is expected to become a major payment method for future virtual reality scenarios.

Cost and safety issues cannot be ignored

Palm payment applications continue to expand, but the industry has a relatively clear understanding of this. In the short term, due to consumers' dependence on traditional payment paths and the difficulty of quickly popularizing palm payment methods, palm payment will become an important supplement to existing mobile payment methods. In the long run, with the advancement of biometric technology and the expansion of application scenarios, as well as consumers' new experience demands for payment methods in the digital era, palm payment may have greater market growth space in the future.

However, the current cost and security issues faced by palm payment cannot be ignored, and these two types of problems are also common problems faced by other biometric payments.

From the perspective of cost composition, palm payment mainly includes hardware costs and promotion costs. On the one hand, palm payment requires palm print entry on a special input device and payment on a palm print recognition device, resulting in the hardware cost of palm payment being higher than the hardware cost of traditional mobile payment such as QR code scanning. On the other hand, palm payment needs to break traditional payment habits, so it still faces high promotion and iteration costs.

From a security point of view, palm print is the user's sensitive personal information, which has the same stability and privacy as fingerprints, faces and other biometrics, and palm print information is highly bound to the user's personal identity, and cannot be changed like account number, password and other information. At the same time, palm payment is closely related to real social life, and there are currently no special management norms and legal documents to supervise and protect it, once information leakage, abuse, deep fake, etc., may cause serious economic and social problems.

Of course, at present, palm payment is still in the initial stage of development, and the problems and challenges it faces should be viewed from the perspective of development. Palm payment has both the basic characteristics of traditional mobile payment and the new characteristics brought by biometric payment methods. The industry should work together to break through the limitations of industrial development and promote the rapid implementation of health norms for the biometric payment industry such as palm payment.

First, enrich payment scenarios and improve the application ecosystem. With the accelerated integration of the digital economy and the real economy, mobile payment has increasingly become an important tool to realize the effective connection of network platforms, financial institutions and consumer terminals. It is necessary to accelerate the installation and use of the cash register in different commercial service infrastructures, continue to optimize the payment function, actively invite merchants and consumers to participate in activities related to palm payment, continuously expand and enrich the application of palm payment in different scenarios such as retail, catering, transportation, office, campus, etc., and build and improve a new payment ecosystem.

Second, strengthen the leadership of scientific and technological innovation and stimulate the endogenous driving force of industrial development. We should change from the adaptive thinking to meet the needs of the current mobile payment industry to the strategic thinking to meet the needs of the future industry, guide and encourage digital technology giants to cooperate around palm payment technology, focus on the research and development and application of virtual reality, somatosensory interaction, algorithm innovation and other related technologies, continue to promote the construction of industry technical standard system, increase basic research efforts, deeply tap technical potential, and promote the development of biometric payment industry with palm payment.

Third, promote the deep integration of development and security, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the industry. Introduce normative documents related to the collection, storage, service and use of biometric data related to palm payment, strengthen the guidance and regulation of enterprise behavior, and promote the establishment of a benign competition order between the palm payment industry chain. Establish and complete a legal system for biometric payments such as palm payment, clarifying the ownership and use mechanisms of biometric information data. With inclusiveness and prudence and encouraging innovation as the regulatory principles, promote the construction of a regulatory system for biometric payment industries such as palm payment.

(The author is the deputy director of the Information Technology Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)