No cash, no cards, no wallet, and no smartphones. China’s shoppers are increasingly purchasing goods with just a turn of their heads as the country embraces facial payment technology, the Shanghai Daily reports. China’s mobile payment infrastructure is one of the most advanced in the world. Face recognition and could make even the use of QR codes seem old-fashioned. Customers make a purchase by posing in front of point-of-sale (POS) machines equipped with cameras, after linking an image of their face to a digital payment system or bank account.

“I don’t even have to bring a mobile phone with me, I can go out and do shopping without taking anything,” says Hu Bo, Chief Information Officer of Wedome bakery, which uses facial payment machines across hundreds of stores. Hu says 300 of his bakeries have facial payment systems, and he plans to introduce them in 400 more. He believes that it makes the checkout process more efficient, but concedes the number of shoppers using the new technology is still modest. “Much of the smart retail trend is company-driven with two aims – to prevent shoplifting and to get better data on consumer preferences for analytics and marketing,” says Jeffrey Ding, Researcher at the Center for the Governance of AI at Oxford University.

Despite the concerns over data security and privacy, Chinese consumers seem unperturbed by facial recognition payments. Alipay, the financial arm of Alibaba, has been leading the charge in China with devices installed in 100 cities.The firm is predicting enormous growth in the sector and recently launched an upgrade of its Smile-to-Pay system, using a device roughly the size of an iPad. Alipay will spend CNY3 billion over three years on implementing the technology.

Tencent, which runs the WeChat app with 600 million users, unveiled its new facial payment device called Frog Pro in August, while a growing number of startups are trying to tap into the burgeoning industry. “Alipay is spending billions to popularize facial payment technology through giving out subsidies for vendors and rewards for consumers that use facial payment,” said Zhang Mengmeng, Analyst at Counterpoint.

At the IFuree self-service supermarket in Tianjin, a 3D camera scans the faces of those entering the store, measuring width, height and depth of their faces, then another quick scan again at checkout. “It’s convenient because you can buy things very quickly,” says retiree Zhang Liming after using facial payment for her groceries.

But not all consumers are convinced facial recognition is a good thing. A poll by news portal Sina Technology found that more than 60% of respondents said scanning their faces for payments made them feel “ugly.” In response, Alipay pledged to introduce “beautifying filters” into all its cameras, the Shanghai Daily reports.