Users Question Privacy Policy Of Chinese Face-Swapping App

By  |  September 2, 2019
 | 
deepfakes, face-swapping, china, Zao

A Chinese app that lets users convincingly swap their faces with film or TV characters has rapidly become one of the country’s most downloaded apps, triggering privacy concerns, Reuters reported Monday (Sept. 2).

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    Released on Friday (Aug. 30), the ZAO app went viral as Chinese users jumped on the chance to see themselves act out scenes from well-known movies using deepfake technology, according to Bloomberg.

    Users provide a series of selfies in which they blink, move their mouths and make facial expressions, which the app uses to realistically morph the person’s animated likeness onto movies, TV shows or other content.

    But there are privacy concerns with the user agreement, which said people uploading their pictures to ZAO agree to “surrender the intellectual property rights to their face, and permit ZAO to use their images for marketing purposes,” the Reuters article said.

    ZAO said on Weibo that it would address those concerns.

    “We thoroughly understand the anxiety people have toward privacy concerns,” the company said. “We have received the questions you have sent us. We will correct the areas we have not considered and require some time.”

    There has been growing concern over deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to appear genuine. Critics say the technology can be used to create bogus videos to manipulate elections, defame someone, or potentially cause unrest by spreading misinformation on a massive scale.

    Deepfakes of this kind can believably impersonate famous personalities and make them say whatever the aspiring faker types. How to deal with this threat come election time is something U.S. politicians are scrambling to regulate. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff has described it as a source of “nightmarish scenarios” for the 2020 presidential election, Bloomberg reported.

    AI and machine learning do play vital roles in stopping fraud and other attacks on social media and elsewhere. In general, the main advantage AI offers — assuming the system is properly configured and deployed — is its ability to look deep into consumer and payments data to find patterns of fraud, and doing so by looking at information across users instead of examining one user at a time.


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    OnePay Furthers Super App Initiative by Adding Branded Wireless Plan

    By  |  September 3, 2025
     | 
    woman using mobile phone

    OnePay is reportedly adding its own branded wireless plan as it works to become an American super app.

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      The FinTech company, which is majority-owned by Walmart, is making the service available within its app Wednesday (Sept. 3), in partnership with mobile services startup Gigs, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing a statement from Gigs and confirmation by OnePay.

      Neither OnePay nor Gigs immediately replied to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

      The plan provides unlimited 5G data, talk and text on the AT&T network for $35 a month, according to the CNBC report.

      The new service joins the credit and debit cards, savings accounts, buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans, and digital wallet with peer-to-peer payments that are already available in the OnePay app, per the report.

      In another recent addition to its app, OnePay said in June that it will launch a credit card program in partnership with Synchrony in the fall. PYMNTS reported at the time that the OnePay app serves as a digital front door through which general purpose and private-label cards (for Walmart purchases) will roll out.

      “Our goal with this credit card program is to deliver an experience for consumers that’s transparent, rewarding and easy to use,” OnePay CEO Omer Ismail said at the time in a press release. “We’re excited to be partnering with Synchrony to launch a program at Walmart that checks each of those boxes and will help serve millions of people.”

      In March, the company added installment loans to its product portfolio as it began giving Walmart U.S. customers the option to use Klarna-powered OnePay loans to pay for items with repayments terms of three to 36 months. This offering resulted from Klarna agreeing to become Walmart’s exclusive provider of installment loans, giving Walmart’s customers in the U.S. access to flexible payment options.

      As for Gigs, it raised $73 million in a Series B funding round in December, saying it would use the new funding to expand its geographical footprint and expand the products and services it offers tech companies.

      Gigs Co-founder and CEO Hermann Frank said at the time in press release that Gigs enables “any tech company to distribute phone plans directly through their apps, transforming connectivity from a standalone commodity into a core, customizable feature of every digital product experience.”

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