Samsung’s New Phone Lets You Pay With Your Face

Hopefully they’ve got that exploding battery thing fixed

March 16, 2017 9:00 am

Given the Galaxy’s explosive history, we’d let someone else try this first.

It appears Samsung’s next phone will enable mobile payments using facial-recognition technology. Yes: pay with your face. That’s a thing people will soon be doing.

According to Bloomberg, the Galaxy S8 will use “fingerprint, iris and facial detection” to verify financial payments and is working with banks to “help them embrace” the new system. Previous Galaxy phones have used facial recognition as an unlocking mechanism, but the S8 will be the first model that will use the technology to sign off on payments — and it’ll be fast.

“Due to some limits of iris scanning such as speed and accuracy, we have decided to add facial recognition to the Galaxy S8,” according to a Samsung rep quoted in The Investor. “With a face scanner, it will take less than 0.01 seconds to unlock the phone.”

Samsung needs a win after the Note 7 debacle, so hopefully this doesn’t blow up in their face.

The InsideHook Newsletter.

News, advice and insights for the most interesting person in the room.