Alibaba finance arms buys eye recognition firm
(16 September 2016 – China) Alibaba’s payments arm, Ant Financial, has acquired EyeVerify, a maker of optical recognition technology.
Reports indicate that the acquisition was between US$70 to $100 million (A$92 to $132 million) and that it was an all-cash transaction.
Currently, several banks and financial institutions in China including Wells Fargo use the technology to help verify customers.
Reportedly as accurate as fingerprint scanning, the software is incorporated into banks’ smartphone apps and examines blood vessels behind the whites of customers eyes’.
The acquisition provides EyeVerify a much larger platform, and access to more than 450 million of An Financial’s user base, who engage with the firm's payment service, AliPay.
“With Ant as a parent company, we can leverage their resources and stability to cast a vision that is 20 years long,” said Toby Rush, EyeVerify CEO.
He added that the company expected to remain in its current Kansas City headquarters, and had plans to “double and triple the size of the business.”
EyeVerify’s role in China will be to authenticate payments on Alipay’s vast peer-to-peer network, which Rush likens to PayPal.
Prior to the acquisition, EyeVerify had raised around US$10.4 million since it was founded in 2012.
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