The face-swiping payment war that started in 2019, after being “turned off” due to the impact of the epidemic, is now rekindling.
Recently, WeChat Pay announced that three companies including Lu Shenshi will be newly included in its list of 3D camera suppliers for face-scanning payment. So far, the number of 3D camera suppliers for WeChat face payment has reached 5. In the one and a half years from the introduction of “Frog” in early 2019 to July 2020, this number has been 1. With the addition of new forces such as Lu Shenshi, this battle about face payment is showing a new trend.
The face-to-face payment battle restarts, and 3D vision manufacturers become the key winner?
The turning point of the battle can be traced back to October 2019, when China UnionPay and more than 60 institutions released the face-swiping payment product “Face-swiping Payment”. With the entry of the “national team”, the market volume of face-swiping payment has been unprecedentedly high. However, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic two months later made people have to wear masks when traveling, and the offensive momentum of face-swiping payment came to an abrupt end.
Entering the post-epidemic era, the war has restarted. After a full year of “freezing period”, Alipay’s original first-mover advantage gradually disappeared. After returning to the same starting line, the speed of seizing the market has become the focus of competition among major payment manufacturers. As the two protagonists on the battlefield, Alipay and WeChat Pay have adopted very different strategies.
Alipay still adopts the most direct and effective method – subsidy-driven. In September 2020, Alipay attributed face-scanning payment to the overall IoT strategy, and released a new incentive policy: for the first time, the code-scanning incentive was added to the face-scanning payment device, and the incentive for face-scanning payment to remove duplicate users was doubled. . A month later, Alipay launched the “New Blue Ocean Plan” to provide large-scale subsidies for the promotion of IoT devices including face-scanning payment devices.
WeChat Pay chose to deepen the industry chain, announced a standardized hardware access process, and incorporated more service providers into the ecosystem. The addition of 3D vision companies such as Lu Shenshi, as a camera supplier, is a direct manifestation of this strategy. The addition of suppliers has allowed WeChat face payment devices to have more diverse choices in camera selection. Taking Lu Shenshi as an example, the M10-DL selected for the selection of the WeChat face payment camera belongs to the Lu Shenshi Qingluan product series. It adopts a highly integrated MIPI data interface and can be widely used in various thin, small and small Face brushing device.
As Lu Shenshi’s smart module for the financial payment field, the Qingluan series face recognition camera is a high-precision structured light RGBD camera launched by Lu Shenshi for most of the face-swiping payment scenarios and for the recognition needs of large libraries. The Qingluan series is positioned as a cost-effective 3D structured light depth camera module. Its advantages in cost and volume will lay a solid foundation for the mass production of WeChat payment face-scanning devices.
In addition, the performance advantages of the Qingluan series are also very significant. With the “Luan 3D Vision Algorithm Development Kit”, it can realize payment-level liveness detection, accurate 3D face recognition in a large library, high-precision face modeling, and real-time motion capture. and other functions.
The addition of 3D vision manufacturers such as Lu Shenshi and other 3D vision manufacturers will greatly enhance the competitiveness of WeChat in the field of face-scanning payment.
The so-called “the troops and horses are not moved, the food and grass go first”, in this market battle for face-scanning payment, the importance of the industrial chain is self-evident. It is no exaggeration to say that the camera modules provided by 3D vision manufacturers represented by Lu Shen will largely determine the final outcome of the war.
Retrieving the “jewel in the crown”, 3D vision technology has entered a commercial explosion period
Driven by WeChat Pay and Alipay, face-scanning payment has rapidly gained popularity in the past three years. According to data released by WeChat Pay, the overall market size of face-scanning payment devices increased by 12 times in 2019 compared with 2018. As of June 2020, face-scanning payment devices increased by 70% compared to December 2019. In addition, the application of face-swiping payment devices in industry scenarios has also grown rapidly. Compared with the same period in 2019, large-screen self-service devices doubled, vending machines doubled, and desktop cash registers increased 10 times.
Entering the list of WeChat payment providers means stepping into a fast-growing trillion-dollar blue ocean market. It is foreseeable that in the future, Lu Shenshi’s revenue will usher in rapid growth.
More importantly, payment-level face recognition technology has always been known as the “jewel in the crown” of 3D vision technology. The rapid popularization of face-swiping payment indicates that the face recognition technology based on 3D vision has fully withstood the test of the market. After being selected into the list of WeChat payment providers, Lu Shenshi has been recognized by the top of the pyramid at the technical level.
With the continuous development of technologies such as 5G and AI, machine vision is accelerating from 2D to 3D. After conquering the payment-level face recognition, the mature 3D vision technology is expected to usher in a full bloom in the fields of families, schools, hospitals, governments, enterprises, factories, public transportation and so on. According to Tractica data, the global 3D sensor and hardware subsystem market will grow from $8.2 billion in 2017 to $57.9 billion in 2025, with huge room for future development.
With financial-level face recognition capabilities, Lu Shen sees that he will be more comfortable in smart home, smart transportation and other fields, bringing greater market imagination.
Deeply cultivating 3D vision for nearly seven years, Lu Shen sees “the heavy sword has no edge”
Nowadays, the 3D vision track is bustling, but Lu Shenshi, who entered the game in 2015, has already established its leading position in the 3D visual intelligent perception technology industry with the help of the two big axes of “module + algorithm”.
Deeply cultivating the 3D vision track for nearly seven years, Lu Shenshi has always believed that “all cold dazzling skills are not as impressive as details”. Although he has strong technical strength, Lu Shenshi does not blindly pursue high-tech technology, but strives to provide the most suitable solutions for different scenarios.
Taking face-swiping door locks and face-swiping payments as an example, these two segments have different pain points, which directly lead to different user needs for 3D sensors. Specifically, most of the face-scanning door locks are driven by batteries. If the power consumption is too high, the frequency of consumers replacing batteries will inevitably increase, and the experience will undoubtedly be greatly reduced. Therefore, for smart door locks, it is particularly important to solve the power consumption problem of vision sensors.
However, this pain point does not apply to face-based payment products that can be powered by themselves. As a new “darling” on the stage of intelligent payment, it puts forward higher requirements for data accuracy, image quality, detection distance, etc.
Based on this insight, Lu Shenshi provided customized solutions respectively.
For applications such as face-swiping payment, the company launched a high-precision RGBD camera Qingluan. It supports HDR (High Dynamic Range Imaging) function, which perfectly guarantees the sharpness of portraits in backlit scenes. The supporting “Lu 3D Vision Algorithm Development Kit” can realize functions such as payment-level live detection, accurate 3D face recognition from a large library, high-precision face modeling, and real-time motion capture, promoting an efficient and high-quality face payment experience.
For related applications such as smart door locks, Lu Shenshi has developed another module: 3D-FaceID smart module Chongming. Its advantage lies in its small size, its size is only 46.9mm (width) * 12.3mm (thickness) * 20.8mm (height); and the power consumption is extremely low, the built-in lithium battery can be used for up to 1 year on a single charge.
The differentiated play style of hardware is the premise for Lu Shenshi to take the lead on the 3D visual track. It is the key to leading the machine to understand the world like a human.
It is understood that in terms of face recognition algorithm, Lu Shenshi can realize the comparison of tens of millions of large databases and hundreds of millions of large databases, and the equivalent 3D portrait recognition error rate is less than one trillionth, true 3D comparison technology, indicators Far more than two-dimensional identification manufacturers several orders of magnitude.
Up to now, Lu Shenshi is an international leader in the technical directions of 3D depth perception, 3D real-time high-precision reconstruction, 3D tracking recognition and perception, etc. It can provide cloud-based database building, algorithm comparison, modeling for different application scenarios. Three-dimensional full-stack solutions from group solutions to end products, ensuring the safety and efficiency of social life.
In the field of public safety, Lu Shenshi established the country’s first provincial-level three-dimensional portrait recognition system in a certain province, accumulatively passing inspections of more than 30 billion people, and comparing more than 30 million people with face-swiping cards.
In the field of border inspection and entry, Lu Shenshi’s solution won the bid for the face verification project of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge with its efficient and accurate features, providing complete face recognition and anti-counterfeiting equipment and algorithms, helping 8-second customs clearance, and continuing to maintain international security and stability Work contributes.
In the field of smart home, we exclusively provided the FaceID camera module for the first smart door lock of an Internet giant, and successively launched more smart home and AIoT applications with it and related ecological manufacturers.
In the field of rail transit, it has provided nearly 20,000 sets of 3D face-scanning equipment and services for ten lines and 137 subway stations of the Guangzhou Metro, including: high-precision 3D structured light cameras, front-end face algorithms, cloud-based multi-modality Big Kubi on the engine, etc.
3D vision technology related to the metaverse, AR and other fields that have been very popular recently, Lu Shenshi is also working on the layout.
There is no doubt that in the past 7 years, Lu Shen has become a leader from a pioneer in the 3D vision industry, with opportunities and challenges.
For Lu Shenshi, being included in the WeChat face payment camera supplier list is of course winning a big customer, but more importantly, it means that its technology and products have withstood the most stringent scrutiny and tests. After seven years of sharpening a sword, it is only a matter of time for Lu Shenshi to win a larger market after he has acquired sufficient technical strength.
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