Tencent sees a future where everyone gets by with just a swipe of the hand

Alkira Reinfrank, Mengchen Zhang and Michelle Toh, CNN

Shenzhen, China (CNN) — Imagine a future where you can do just about anything simply by waving your hand: making purchases, taking the subway or letting yourself in at the office. In China, Tencent is already doing it.

The Shenzhen-based tech giant has rolled out a palm scanning service in China that’s designed to let users leave most of their essentials at home: their house keys, wallets or phones.

While the technology itself is not new — companies such as Amazon (AMZN) have had their own offerings for years — Tencent wants to be the company that finally makes it mainstream, according to Guo Rizen, a senior company executive.

“We have confidence in this,” Guo, vice general manager of Tencent’s Weixin Pay Industry Application unit, told CNN in an exclusive interview when asked whether it could represent a new norm.

Perhaps no other company in China knows more about catering to the masses than Tencent. It owns WeChat, the ubiquitous Chinese platform that has come to be known as a “super-app,” used for everything from social networking to ordering groceries to digital payments.

Now it’s betting on Weixin Palm Payment, a biometric system launched in May for users of Weixin Pay, WeChat’s sister app. The service is only available within mainland China.

The software allows users to ditch their smartphones or transit cards when hopping on a Beijing subway line, for example, by hovering their hands over a sensor. Infrared cameras then analyze the individual palm prints and unique patterns of veins under the skin, allowing each user to be identified and payment to be processed within seconds.

The global biometric payments market is forecast to reach more than 3 billion users and nearly $5.8 trillion in value by 2026, according to an estimate from consultancy Goode Intelligence. Last year, JPMorgan cited the opportunity as it announced its own payment authentication software pilot program using palm scanning.

The system is similar to facial recognition software, just with more accuracy, according to Guo. “With face scanning technology, people can look a lot like each other — like twins,” he said. “But with palm payments, even brothers and sisters who look alike have unique palm prints and veins.”

The application is also seen in the industry as an upgrade of systems long used by a number of Japanese firms, which allow employees to scan their palms to gain entry to office buildings, Guo noted.

Those systems require users to press their hands on top of scanning devices, something they may be less willing to do now that the pandemic has made people more germ-phobic, he said.

Going bigger

Tencent’s iteration is contactless, as is Amazon’s. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant launched its own palm scanning payment service in 2020, letting users connect their palm prints to credit cards to buy items at the company’s cashier-free stores.

Fujitsu, the Japanese tech giant, has also long offered a contact-free system for a different purpose: cybersecurity. The company’s PalmSecure service allows users to scan their hands to authenticate online accounts, instead of using passwords.

But Tencent wants to go bigger. The company is working to make its platform part of daily life, according to Guo.

“The application scenarios can be a little different,” he said. “We’re hoping that palm payments can save people the trouble of carrying physical items … so that our lives become more convenient.”

For example, Tencent staff are using the system to enter corporate canteens for lunch, saving them the hassle of running back to their desks if they forget their security passes, according to Guo.

The technology is also gradually being rolled out externally. In the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, more than 1,500 7-Eleven stores have rolled it out.

At Supermonkey, a trendy Chinese gym chain, about 2,000 users have signed up to use palm scanning to check in and out of facilities for workouts, the company told CNN.

While Guo is optimistic about the response so far, he stresses that the service is still in its early days. “Whether to roll it out on a large scale depends on the market demand” and feedback, he said, adding that Tencent had not decided whether to expand its use outside mainland China.

Privacy concerns

Experts have warned that such technology carries risks.

While many consumers have embraced it as a way to reduce their reliance on credit cards and cell phones, privacy and security concerns remain high, noted Edward Santow, industry professor of responsible technology at the University of Technology Sydney.

“People … don’t want to participate in some kind of surveillance state,” he said. “They don’t want [that] whenever they’re making a payment for something, for that then to show up on some official register, and then to be asked questions, or worse, about it.”

Santow also said the collection of information could attract thieves. “When your personal information is hoovered up at a huge scale, that creates a kind of honeypot for cybercriminals. And if that information is obtained illegally, it can then be sold on the black market and it can cause you enormous problems,” he noted.

In response, Tencent told CNN that security and privacy are its utmost priority. Users’ biometric data is stored on the cloud and encrypted for security, it said.

Guo emphasized that the scanning service was available to users strictly on an opt-in basis, and allowed users to set their own spending limits for authorized payments. The company declined to disclose how many users it had.

The way Guo sees it, carrying a physical object is actually more unsafe. “You can lose it accidentally, and if you do, someone else will have it, right? In fact, it’s quite insecure,” he argued. “So we are thinking that perhaps in the near future, these physical [items] will no longer be needed.”

Kate Xue, a user of Tencent’s palm scanning service at a Supermonkey gym in Shenzhen, said she wasn’t too worried about the possibility that her data could fall into the wrong hands.

“I think it’s inevitable,” she told CNN of the potential for misuse. “In the future, if we are going to accept AI or more technological changes, I think everyone’s information is going to be shared.”

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