In Macao, China's special administrative area, ATMs will introduce the technology of facial recognition for UnionPay cardholders
To this decision, the Chinese authorities came to fight money laundering on the island's territory.
Macau is the only region in China that does not have a ban on gambling, so the island has become a refuge for criminals and people who evade taxes. By laundering cash on a large scale, they thereby reduce the value of the yuan and deplete the reserves of capital.
In 2014, the Reuters survey showed that many mainland Chinese use UnionPay cards backed by the state to bypass the cash withdrawal limits of 20,000 yuan a day and use this money for gambling or transferring abroad.
As it turned out, customers open several bank accounts, and then withdraw cash from each of them, or they turn to pawn shops in Macau to commit fraudulent purchases.
The Macau authorities have not yet decided on the implementation of face recognition technology, but it is already known that the focus will be on ATMs installed in the casino.