Paytm testing facial recognition tool to unlock payments application

Sep 24, 2018, 12:20 pm EDT | Stephen Mayhew

Indian e-commerce payment system and digital wallet company Paytm is looking at facial recognition technology to enable digital payments, the Economic Times reports.

Unnamed company executives reported that the company has been testing a facial recognition tool that can unlock its payments application on mobile devices and also have plan to extend this feature to allow customers to pay at merchant outlets. “We have already started testing the face recognition tool among our employees. Once live, Paytm users will be able to log into the app by simply looking at the phone.”

According to the sources, Paytm is testing the facial recognition feature on Google’s Android platform and will roll it out soon via an app update. In April the company revealed it reached the 100 million registered wallet threshold in India.

The same executives said the company is developing additional security features to check fraud. “We will be checking for the eye white, which is a recognition of whether a person is alive or dead. We will also make the customer blink once to show he or she is alive.”