Xiaomi and Alipay: parking is paid with a glance, or almost

The new collaboration between Alibaba’s Alipay and Xiaomi marks a significant milestone for the integration of wearable technology into daily life, at least as far as China is concerned. The two companies have joined forces to introduce an extremely simplified parking payments system, aimed at users of Xiaomi’s AI smart glasses.

Parking payments arrive on Xiaomi’s smart glasses

The usage experience designed by Alipay and Xiaomi consists of three essential steps that accompany the driver from entry to exit of the facility. When the vehicle enters a participating parking lot, the AI assistant integrated into the glasses Xiaomi AI Glasses provides a voice reminder announcing the start of the billing, removing any doubt about the service start time.

When it’s time to exit, the user only needs to utter the voice command “XiaoAi, pay for parking”. At that point, the assistant queries the parking system and automatically generates the payment order, finally announcing the amount due.

Once the user vocally confirms the transaction, the payment is completed in a matter of moments, allowing them to leave the parking space without ever having to take out the phone from their pocket.

From a technical standpoint, the feature is supported by Ant Group’s GPASS connectivity technology and the AI interconnection solution AHA. These systems form what the two Chinese brands define as an AI Glasses Parking Assistant, capable of securely identifying the user through voiceprint recognition.

To activate the service, you only need to link your Alipay account once, then enabling quick authorization for every subsequent transaction. Furthermore, the GPASS system enables collaboration between multiple devices: if the user has enabled parking notifications in the Alipay mobile app, the vehicle entry details, billing status, and exit are transmitted simultaneously via voice notifications on the glasses.

In addition to parking management, the Xiaomi-Alipay collaboration has led to the integration of other advanced services within the smart glasses. Among these is Ant Afu, an AI-powered health assistant that lets users pose health-related questions directly while wearing the device.