In other parts of the world, we are already working on how to overcome digital payments, while in Italy they are still a rather insignificant percentage of the total transitions we make. In China, for example, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the payments with facial recognition should gradually replace not only card payments but also those with smartphones (which in Italy have begun to take hold for some years).

These payment systems are devices equipped with a camera, which scan the biometric data of the face of the registered customer and then compare them with those already in possession of the payment platforms. Alipay, for example, has been using facial recognition for user access for years (similar to what most recent iPhones have), so a photo is also associated with the bank account.

Alipay ensures that the system is almost impossible to deceive: the facial recognition of the platform can distinguish the differences between two homozygotic twins and it has a very low margin of error. According to Jidong Chen, manager of a company linked to Alibaba, recognition accuracy is 99.8 percent.

Besides the doubts about the security of this system, there are others that obviously concern privacy, it is not clear in fact if the biometric data of the customers' faces could be in some way shared with other companies. A joke that would cost a lot to the already weak trust among consumers towards these futuristic technologies.