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The Galaxy S8 may use your face for secure mobile payments

Samsung's next phone could combine facial, iris and fingerprint recognition.

Evleaks

Facial recognition is a done thing. So are contactless payments. So why not put them together? Samsung might do just that according to Bloomberg sources. The incoming Galaxy S8 will reportedly feature facial recognition payment tech "within months of release" in a bid to stand out (and grab those feature headlines) in a world where lots of us are plenty happy with our current smartphones.

The S8 will apparently blend together fingerprint, iris and facial detection to verify a user for payment services — and Samsung is apparently already working with banks to get the feature adopted. The company's flagship phones have offered facial recognition to unlock for years, and it's gotten much better at detecting faces as the Galaxy series has matured.

As Bloomberg notes, Apple is approaching facial recognition too. Although it doesn't form any software features in existing iPhones, the company has picked up several facial recognition developers in the last few years. The Galaxy S8 will give Samsung the chance to make up for last year's blunders, and get ahead of a highly-anticipated iPhone that will mark 10 years of Apple's smartphone series. The big Samsung event is in a few weeks -- we won't have wait long.