Smile-to-pay: Chinese shoppers turn to facial payment technology

China's shoppers are increasingly purchasing goods with just a turn of their heads as the country embraces facial payment technology. In a country where mobile payment is already one of the most advanced in the world, customers can make a purchase simply by posing in front of point-of-sale (POS) machines equipped with cameras, after linking an image of their face to a digital payment system or bank account. "I don't even have to bring a mobile phone with me, I can go out and do shopping without taking anything," says Bo Hu, chief information officer of Wedome bakery, which uses facial payment machines across hundreds of stores. "This was not possible either at the earliest stage of mobile payment – only after the birth of facial recognition technology can we complete the payment without anything else," he explains. The software is already widely used, often to monitor citizens.