Tech Tuesday: New mobile payment options & a facial recognition service for retailers

This week on News 1130 radio in Vancouver I talked about these items:

• Facial recognition service for retailers: NEC has launched a facial recognition system, right out of the movie Minority Report, for use in Japanese retail stores that helps retailers create marketing profiles based on the people visiting their stores and even track them between stores. At this point the data is said to be used only for creating marketing strategies. (source)
• New mobile payment options for shopping online: Mastercard & ING are exploring new ways that makes it easier and more secure to shop on your tablet and then pay via a secure QR code image that you scan with your smartphone’s camera. The goal being to avoid the users having to input their payment methods or needing specific hardware that supports a payment technology like NFC or card swiping dongles. (source)