Chinese mobile payments service Alipay now has biometric security

As Chinese internet giants are fighting to own people on mobile payment, Alibaba has announced a way to make its payments service Alipay even more secure on a smartphone — with the introduction of fingerprinting technology in a deal that it inked with smartphone manufacturer Huawei. Alipay Wallet, the e-payment app relaunched last year to handle online-to-offline payments, will be integrated into Huawei’s soon-to-be-launched smartphone, the Mate 7, which boasts biometric security technology. Other than a fingerprint reader, the technology includes encryption and authentication managed by Huawei. This means that instead of entering passwords and codes, all that users have to do now is swipe a digit to confirm payments for a variety of goods and services. In a bid to reassure those concerned that even fingerprint readers can be hacked, Alipay notes that Huawei is providing what is known as “chip-level security” for the Mate 7, which means fingerprint data is saved and stored on the phone — but it is encrypted and can’t be accessed. Huawei is also going to use “high-level” encryption and verification to make sure only approved third-party apps like Alipay Wallet can access the fingerprint information for transactions.