Alibaba Invites EyeVerify CEO To Speak At Conference

Alibaba Group, the parent company of Chinese mPayment giant Alipay, has invited the CEO of EyeVerify to speak at its 2015 Hangzhou YunQi Conference. Toby Rush has accepted the invitation, and was likely keen to do so, given the prominence of both Alibaba and the conference.

The theme of this year’s event is “Internet + Innovation Entrepreneurship”, and Rush will be speaking as part of the Biometrics Sub-Forum on October 15th. As one might imagine, given EyeVerify’s line of business, Rush will be speaking on eye-based biometrics, in a talk entitled “Know you from the Eyes: Eyeprint recognition technology detailed introduction”.

The general purpose of the Biometrics Sub-Forum is to explore biometric technology in the area of payments, and Rush will offer a perspective that sees eye biometrics as central to this field. Speaking in a press release, Rush asserted that eye biometrics will play a “crucial role… in the development of mobile payments and all aspects of secure mobility.” And while EyeVerify has highly accurate eye vein scanning technology to offer in this area, Rush is keen to help to unite the industry in setting standards for the technology, saying that one of the topics he plans to discuss “is the path toward development of a transparent, industry-consensus process for defining the technical and business criteria for Payment Grade biometrics.”

This will be a useful discussion for a number of attendees, but could be of particular interest to Alipay. With its facial recognition-based authentication, it’s already the dominant mPayment system in China, but as it strives to expand into other regions – and as security threats advance – the company may look to more advanced forms of biometric security for transaction authentication as a means to attract security-conscious users. Eye-based biometrics could play an increasingly prominent role in this area going forward.