以后可以用眼睛支付了？阿里巴巴斥资1亿美元收购眼球扫描公司

阿里巴巴的支付子公司蚂蚁金服近日已经收购了EyeVerify。后者是一家光学识别技术的厂商，其产品被富国银行以及其他美国各地的地方银行和信用社所使用。

彭博社报道称，这次收购的价格约为7,000万美元，不过熟知EyeVerify内情的消息人士表示这一数字并不准确，实际的收购价格为1亿美元，而且是全现金交易。

这笔交易十分重要，部分原因在于随着银行开始寻找应对诈骗的新方法，生物识别工具——例如让客户用眼球登录账户的眼球识别软件，正变得越来越流行。

正如《财富》6月关于EyeVerify的一篇报告中指出的那样，这项技术可以检测客户眼白处的血管，准确度高达99.8%，堪比指纹感应。银行会把EyeVerify技术加入他们的应用中，让用户用眼球登录账号，查询余额或是付款。

如今，EyeVerify成为了蚂蚁金服的一部分，这让他们有机会接触到使用支付平台支付宝（Alipay）的超过4.5亿用户，其中大部分来自中国。

在电话采访中，EyeVerify的首席执行官托比·拉什表示：“现在，我的平台比以前大得多。有蚂蚁金服作为母公司，我们可以利用他们的资源和稳定性，把未来的发展规划到20年以后。”

EyeVerify在美国的主要业务是个人银行，与此不同的是，他们在中国的任务是认证支付宝P2P网络上的支付，拉什认为这与贝宝（Paypal）很像。

拉什补充道，这笔交易已经得到了美国银行业监管者的同意。尽管中国公司收购美国银行业技术的核心公司可能会引发关于安全问题的担忧，但拉什表示EveVerify没有收集或储存任何生物识别信息。整个眼球识别过程都在消费者的设备上完成。

与此同时，这家位于密苏里州的公司还将保留全部团队，继续在当地发展。

“未来我们会继续待在现在的堪萨斯城，让公司的规模发展到两倍、三倍于现在。管理层的所有人都会留下，整家公司也是一样。”

EyeVerify成立于2012年，在被收购之前，他们已经募集了1,040万美元的资金。(财富中文网)

译者：严匡正

Alibaba’s payments arm, Ant Financial, has acquired EyeVerify, a maker of optical recognition technology used by Wells Fargo along with dozens of regional banks and credit unions across the country.

Bloomberg reported the purchase price as around $70 million, but a person close to EyeVerify says this is incorrect than that the actual amount was $100 million, and that it was an all-cash transaction.

The deal is significant partly because biometric tools such as eye-recognition software, which lets customers log into accounts with their eyes, are becoming mainstream as banks look for new ways to fight fraud.

As Fortune explained in a June feature about EyeVerify, the technology works by examining the blood vessels behind the whites of customers eyes’ and is reportedly as accurate as fingerprint sensors, which work 99.8% of the time. The banks deploy it by adding EyeVerify to their apps, allowing their clients to log in and do things like check balances and pay bills.

Now, being part of Ant Financial will give EyeVerify more access to the more than 450 million people, most of them in China, who use the online payments platform Alipay.

“Now, I have a much larger platform,” said EyeVerify CEO Toby Rush in a phone interview. “With Ant as a parent company, we can leverage their resources and stability to cast a vision that is 20 years long.”

Unlike in the U.S., where its primary business is consumer banking, EyeVerify’s role in China will be to authenticate payments on Alipay’s vast peer-to-peer network, which Rush likens to PayPal.

Rush added that the deal has already been approved by U.S banking regulators. While a Chinese company acquiring a key piece of U.S. banking technology may raise security concerns, Rush said EveVerify does not collect or store any biometric information. Instead the entire eye-authentication process takes place only on the customers’ device.

Missouri-based EyeVerify, meanwhile, will continue to pursue its course with the same team in place.

“The vision is we’re going to stay right here in Kansas City and double and triple the size of the company. All of the management will stay and the entire company will too.”

Prior to the acquisition, EyeVerify had raised around$10.4 million since it was founded in 2012.