The Chinese government enforced the new procedure of buying SIM cards on December 1st. Cellular providers will require ID and scan face of each buyer, helping to ward off fraudsters, reselling of SIM cards to the illegal users, and defend the rights of citizens in the cyberspace.
In fact, Chinese regulators love to implement face recognition into various domestic daily services, including payments, public transport rides, hotel registration, and so on.
The upcoming change of the registration procedure was announced in September this year. The Ministry of Industry and Information of the People's Republic of China did not specify which companies will manage the face-scanning technologies and services for mobile operators.
Companies also have to send text messages to citizens and make some corrections in contracts. More likely that Megvii, Yitu, or SenseTime can be in charge of executing the new function. These firms are the world-leading AI tech providers of facial and voice recognition software.
