Dive Brief:

• Alibaba founder Jack Ma Sunday paid for a gift to the German city of Hanover using the e-commerce giant's PayPal-like Alipay—​and his face.

• Ma was demonstrating the face-recognition mobile-payment security system at the CeBit conference in Hanover.

• Ma essentially did a mike drop after demonstrating the selfie-like payment security process, taking no questions from the press or audience after. 

Dive Insight:

This is one of those impressive advantages in technology that at first glance may seem like the elusive answer to rock-solid mobile payment security that we’re looking for. But without further investigation—or even answers to questions—it’s hard to know how secure this process is at the moment. Software has become very good at face recognition; it knows a human face isn’t a stop sign. But can your smartphone really tell that it’s you and not someone who looks a little like you? Probably not right now. Maybe in the future.

Jack Ma demonstrates the future of payment technology @cebit pic.twitter.com/PUQWyguRvc

— Alizila.com (@Alizila) March 15, 2015

“[Using] online payments to buy things is always a big headache,” Ma told the crowd. “You forget your password, you worry about security. Today we’ll show you a new technology, how in the future people will buy things online.”