Chain supermarkets located in Baotou, in North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, have introduced Alipay’s face-scanning payment method, providing more convenience for customers, according to a Sept 6 report in the Baotou Daily.

The face-scanning device has been tried out with the checkout systems at the stores in advance. After a staff member completes product bar code scanning, according to a prompt on the display screen, the camera will automatically collect and recognize the customers’ face information.

After account confirmation, customers can click the Confirm Payment button to complete the payment.

The whole process takes around five seconds and the bill can be directly seen in the Alipay app.

The customer needs to set the biological recognition mode in the Alipay app, as well as the face payment function, in order to use the new payment functionality.

The face payment is only for registered users, which means that the user needs to complete a real-name authentication process in the Alipay app.