Fingerprint payment debuts at Beijing restaurant

A customer pays for a bottle of Coke by scanning fingerprints at Funiutang restaurant on Tuesday. (Photo: Beijing Daily)

(ECNS) -- Instead of taking out her credit card and entering a lengthy password for the 46 yuan ($7.4) spent on her lunch, Wang Dan, who works in Beijing's central business district, pressed her fingers to a couple of blue oval payment machine pads, sorting the bill in a second.

The restaurant, Funiutang Rice Noodle, is the first in Beijing to adopt fingerprint payment technology, Beijing Daily reported.

Zhang Tianyi, Funiutang founder and Peking University graduate, said they received the payment device last week. It looks much like a POS machine with two oval-shaped blue pads to scan fingerprints. More than 10 customers choose to pay by fingerprint scanning each day, he said.

Just this week, China's largest payment platform Alipay and telecommunications giant Huawei launched the fingerprint payment service on its Alipay Wallet app. The service will be available for use first on Huawei's Mate 7 smartphone, due to be released this week.

An insider with Alipay touts the security of the biometric technology, as fingerprint data is saved and stored on the phone, but is encrypted and can't be accessed.