With VR Pay, will Alibaba lead a move from mobile payment to VR payment?
Ant Financial, Alibaba’s financial service affiliate, on Wednesday demonstrated its VR Pay in Shenzhen. VR Pay is a payment method which allows users who are immersed in a VR system to pay for something without the need to take off the VR headset.
In VR Pay, motion is the interface. As AllChinaTech has written, users complete the payment in three ways: gazing at a single point, nodding, or hand gestures. For authentication with gestures, additional devices such as a sensor is needed.
The head of VR Pay, Li Feng, said that the team has integrated biological recognition technology to make the payment more secure.
Ant Financial already leads in mobile payment, running what it claims is the world’s leading third-party online payment platform, Alipay. Currently, Alipay has over 450 million active registered users, and more than 200 financial institution partners, according to the Ant Financial website.
In March, Alibaba established the GnomeMagic lab to explore business opportunities in VR shopping, payments for which will be completed by VR Pay.
VR Pay will partner with the more simple and Cardboard-like virtual reality devices, according to Chinese news outlet Yicai.com.
(Top photo from Pixabay.com)