Tencent Cloud debuts palm scanning tech in global markets

Tencent Cloud has launched its palm verification technology for international markets as part of a suite of new artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud offerings announced at the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit in Shenzhen this week.

The technology, which is being piloted globally by companies such as Indonesian telco Telkomsel, uses infrared cameras to analyse vein patterns and palm prints, enabling AI-driven identity authentication for applications including payment systems and security access management.

It has been available in China since 2023 for contactless payments for Beijing’s airport express train and at Shenzhen University and 7-Eleven stores in Guangdong province. Unlike facial recognition, palm verification makes it easier to tell the difference between twins.

Alongside palm verification, Tencent Cloud unveiled other AI-enabled cloud services for the international market, such as a platform for building AI applications and e-KYC (know-your-customer) solutions for remote customer identity verification.

Serving over 10,000 businesses in 30 industries across more than 80 markets, Tencent Cloud has experienced double-digit growth in international markets over the past three years.

In Southeast Asia, Tencent is leveraging its strengths in platform services, media streaming, and communications, offering application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers to build streaming applications quickly and transcoding services to reduce bandwidth and storage costs.

To support global expansion, Tencent Cloud has established nine technical support centres providing 24/7 service. It has also formed partnerships with companies like Aladdin Cybersecurity, Avatara, MFEC Public Company, and Siemens to explore new AI opportunities.

At the summit, Tencent introduced several product upgrades to support its partners’ AI and digitalisation goals. These include the “AI Infra” suite of computing, storage, and networking solutions optimised for large model development and training, and Tencent Hunyuan Turbo, a model service based on the mixture-of-experts architecture that can double training efficiency and reduce inference costs by 50%.

Tencent’s AI coding assistant, powered by its Hunyuan foundation model, is now used by over 50% of the company’s programmers, enhancing productivity by 40%. Additionally, Tencent Meeting now offers features such as intelligent recording, an AI assistant, and multilingual translation, serving over 15 million users each month.