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SnapPay told the news site it would deliver the system by early next year.

“If it has use in the market, our company will use it,” Wei told the National Post in a brief response to several written questions. “Because society moves forward and we will follow it. “

Asked about whether his connections to China should be cause for concern, he said “everything … you’ve heard is nonsense.”

As honorary chair of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations, Wei is a longtime friend of China’s government.

The Confederation has worked with the local Chinese consulate to promote Beijing’s stance on Tibet, try to bring its Confucius Institute to Toronto schools and recently celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic. Beijing’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office praised the group on its website.

Earlier this year, Wei shook hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at an event in Beijing. The editor of a newspaper he owned said she was fired in 2015 for running a column critical of an Ontario politician with ties to Beijing.

In China, facial recognition has become a popular retail tool, but is also at the heart of a growing digital surveillance apparatus. It’s used for everything from buying KFC chicken to naming and shaming jaywalkers, and tracking the country’s persecuted Muslim Uyghur minority.

This week, a Chinese law professor took the unusual step in a state that brooks little dissent of suing a zoo in the city of Hangzhou for requiring members to use facial recognition to get into the facility.