Skip to main content

Virtual reality, real money: Alibaba to enable VR shoppers to pay by nodding

gear vr controller dtdeals samsung
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Alibaba, often referred to as the Amazon.com of China, is working on a new payment method that will allow shoppers wearing virtual reality headsets to make payments without removing the devices. Called VR Pay, it will allow people to select items for purchase from virtual shopping malls simply by looking and nodding at them.

The new system is being developed by Ant Financial, which manages Alipay, China’s largest payment processor with over 450 million active users, according to Reuters.

“It was very boring to have to take off your goggles for payment,” said Lin Feng, who heads the project. “With this, you will never need to take out your phone.”

It may seem like nodding at products on a virtual shelf would be a surefire way to accidentally buy a lot of things you didn’t mean to, but there’s an involved confirmation process in place. First, VR Pay needs to verify the user’s identity, which it can do via linked account logins on connected devices or through the use of voice recognition. Next, a password will still be required to authenticate payment. This can be input via touch, head movement, or by staring at a point on the virtual display for longer than one and a half seconds.

VR Pay isn’t the first innovative payment method to come from Alibaba and other retailers, who are constantly working to take advantage of the latest trends in online shopping. In 2015, Alibaba introduced a form of payment based on facial recognition called “pay with a selfie.” Amazon is also working on a selfie payment method, and offers voice recognition payments on its Amazon Echo device.

Earlier this year, MasterCard partnered with VR wearables company Wearality to work on its own VR shopping and payment system, according to VentureBeat. As VR continues to get less expensive and make inroads into the consumer space, we can expect to see more general-use applications for the technology in the future.

Editors' Recommendations

Daven Mathies
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Daven is a contributing writer to the photography section. He has been with Digital Trends since 2016 and has been writing…
Windows 12 could repeat Windows 11’s big mistake
surface laptop studio 2 review 07

The first details about Windows 12 are starting to take shape, and the rumored OS could repeat the biggest mistake of Windows 11. As we've heard previously, the new OS will likely have a big focus on AI features. Now, we're hearing that many of those features will require a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), as reported by Windows Central.

It's hard to forget the fumble Microsoft made with Windows 11 and its requirement of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). This security chip isn't included, at least in hardware, on the majority of off-the-shelf PC components, leading many to believe their PC wasn't compatible with Windows 11 when it really was.

Read more
All the ways to lower your CPU temperatures, from easy to expert
Intel's 14900K CPU socketed in a motherboard.

If you're overclocking your processor, want to bring down noise levels, or just want to increase the longevity of your CPU, then lowering it's temperature is a great plan. There are a lot of ways you can do it, too, from the easy and cheap to the complicated and costly, and everything in-between.

Whatever your reasoning, here's how to lower your CPU temperatures in a few different ways.

Read more
HP OMEN gaming laptops, PCs and monitors all have huge price cuts
HP Omen 40L Gaming PC on a table connected to a monitor.

HP has a huge sale on all things HP Omen and gaming related, which means it’s the place to check out for gaming laptop deals, along with the best monitor deals and gaming PC deals too. If you’re looking to upgrade to a sweet new rig, you need to check out this sale. We’ve highlighted the pick of the bunch below.
HP Omen 31.5-inch QHD Curved Gaming Monitor -- $250, was $380

HP may not feature on our look at the best gaming monitors, but this HP Omen 31.5-inch QHD Curved Gaming Monitor sounds great on paper. It has a great QHD resolution of 2560 x 1440 along with 400 nits of brightness, 1ms response time, and a 3,000:1 contrast ratio. A 1500R curvature means you can enjoy a more immersive experience than the average gaming monitor. It also has HDR support, AMD FreeSync Premium, and two HDMI 2 ports for hooking up all your devices. 99% sRGB and 90% DCI-P3 color gamut all further help matters to ensure you get a vibrant experience throughout.

Read more