Fingerprint Cards - FING B

Alibaba payment service Alipay allows mobile consumers to pay with their fingers
Frank Tong BY FRANK TONG Senior editor, China
Instead of entering a password to pay, a shopper can just swipe her finger on the screen of a phone.

Alipay, the payment subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that is widely used in China, has added fingerprint authentication for mobile shoppers using two smartphones.

Authentication solution provider Nok Nok Labs Inc. said this week that Alipay has deployed the company’s payment authentication system, NNLTM S3, to authenticate payments by fingerprint by consumers using the Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone.

The users of Alipay’s mobile application, no longer need to input a password to complete a purchase. Instead, they can swipe finger on the home button of a Samsung Galaxy S5 to authenticate themselves when shopping online.

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An Alipay spokesman confirmed the Nok Nok announcement. “Alipay has deployed an authentication technology provided by Nok Nok Labs for the Samsung Galaxy S5 phone,” an Alipay spokeswoman says. “This is part of Alipay’s ongoing efforts to provide a secure and convenient payment experience for our users.” Alipay began testing the fingerprint authentication system in July.

Besides the Galaxy S5, Alipay said this week that it had enabled fingerprint authentication for users of another smartphone, the Mate7 from China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Nok Nok says it is not providing the authentication technology for the Huawei phone.

The users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone can’t use this authentication of Alipay because Apple didn’t open its payment interface to other companies, Alipay says. Apple last week announced that it would enable outside companies to develop fingerprint authentication applications for its iPhone 6, which goes on sale tomorrow in the United States.

“Fingerprint authentication is faster and easier to use [than passwords],” Nok Nok Labs president and CEO Phillip Dunkelberger tells Internet Retailer. “ Besides, the system is much safer than a password. The NNLTM S3 suite allows Alipay to store fingerprint information in an encrypted zone on the phone and only the server can validate it.”

Alipay is the largest online payment company in China and one of the largest mobile payment companies in the world. Alipay users in 2013 spent more than 900 billion Yuan ($145.16 billion) through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

“As a global leader, Alipay needed a solution that can scale to meet future authentication requirements, while ensuring that consumers get a secure, yet easy-to-use solution today.” Dunkelberger says, “Our system supports multiple authentication approaches, such as voice and face recognition and could reduce the cost and complexity of authentication infrastructure by unifying the authentication silos.”

Nok Nok Labs says it previously provided authentication technology to Lenovo Group Ltd., a major personal computer manufacturer based in China, and the PayPal online payment subsidiary of eBay Inc.

Founded in 2011 and based in Palo Alto, CA, Nok Nok Labs participated in 2012 in the formation of the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, which seeks to create standards for a variety of authentication technologies. Other founding members included security chip maker Infineon technologies AG, Lenovo and PayPal. The organization now has more than 100 member companies, including Google Inc., Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and Samsung Group.