China's first internet-based bank, which has launched in a trial phase in Shenzhen, south China, plans to use facial recognition to identify new account holders and authorise transactions.Qianhai Webank has a registered capital of three billion yuan ($480 million) and is owned by Tencent Inc, which operates China's most popular online chatting service.Premier Li Keqiang launched the bank on 4 January by ceremonially pressing the “confirm” button for a 35,000 yuan loan issued to a Shenzhen truck driver – the bank plans to focus on small- to medium-sized businesses.Remote account opening will rely on facial recognition – on both desktop PCs and smartphones.”We think that the face recognition technology is relatively mature. It has low rate of error, lower than the human eye,” said Cao Tong, president of Webank, told CCTV.The bank will run trial operations for three to four months before being officially open to the public in April.
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