Rokid Partners with Alipay to Launch World's First "Look-to-Pay" Feature for Smart Glasses | Linear Portfolio

Paying securely and efficiently with smart glasses — no phone required — has long been a staple of science fiction. Now it's real.

Recently, Rokid announced a strategic partnership with Alipay to launch an innovative smart glasses payment solution: "Look and Pay." The Rokid Glasses, built for all-day wear, are full-featured smart glasses and the world's first to enable payment functionality.

Linear Capital was Rokid's earliest investor and has continued to back the company through multiple subsequent rounds. We look forward to terminal products like smart glasses becoming woven into daily life and unlocking ever more use cases.

In today's digital transformation, payment methods have never stopped evolving — from cash to cards, from QR codes to facial recognition. Each iteration has brought sweeping convenience.

Recently, Linear Capital angel-round portfolio company Rokid announced its partnership with Alipay, using Rokid Glasses as the vehicle to launch the innovative "Look and Pay" solution — once again driving innovation in payments, delivering an unprecedented user experience, and sketching a new blueprint for how we'll pay in the future.

For users, traditional payment methods are already fairly convenient, but pain points persist in certain scenarios.

In crowded places — mall checkout counters, popular restaurants — waiting to pay is common. You pull out your phone, unlock it, open the payment app, align it with the scanner. Simple enough, but during peak hours these steps chew through time and drag down efficiency.

Rokid Glasses are full-featured smart glasses designed for all-day wear, and the world's first to enable payment. Leveraging the glasses' unique form factor, Rokid Glasses complete payment in three steps, faster and easier:

• Wearing Rokid Glasses, the user says: "Rokid, pay 10 yuan"
• Rokid Glasses recognize the Alipay QR code
• The user says "Confirm payment" to complete the transaction

Throughout this process, payment information appears directly on the glasses' display — no phone interaction needed.

During the morning rush, grabbing breakfast no longer means fumbling for your phone; just free your hands and pay by voice. At the wet market after picking out produce, smart glasses keep things cleaner — no need to pull out a phone that might get dirty. Cycling when you can't easily reach for your phone? A quick "look" with Rokid Glasses handles payment. When you'd normally need to pick up your phone to scan a QR code on a computer screen, the glasses can simply look and complete it. For certain groups, like people with disabilities, the accessibility benefits are especially pronounced.

Rokid Glasses' lightweight, comfortable design makes them an ideal companion for daily work and life. Whether shopping, dining out, or traveling, users can wear them effortlessly and enjoy convenient payments anytime. The "Look and Pay" feature also adds flexibility: when your hands are full or accessing your phone is awkward, voice commands let you check payment records and review transaction details, truly achieving seamless payment integration.

On security, Rokid Glasses combine with Alipay's multi-dimensional risk control system to safeguard every transaction, providing comprehensive protection for the device itself and the user's payment process, ensuring device security and "verified user" payments, with a "compensate if stolen" guarantee.

This isn't merely a change in payment medium — it's a reconstruction of human-computer interaction logic.

This Rokid-Alipay collaboration represents a perfect union between a leader in human-computer interaction and a payments giant.

Rokid, a frontrunner in human-computer interaction, has consistently pursued cutting-edge technology to deliver exceptional AI+AR experiences. Rokid Glasses are the world's first full-featured, all-in-one smart glasses, integrating multiple large language models including Tongyi Qianwen, DeepSeek, Doubao, Zhipu Qingyan, and Nami Search. They support intelligent Q&A, real-time translation, teleprompter, navigation, universal object recognition, message alerts, photo and video capture, and more — providing the solid hardware and software foundation for "Look and Pay."

Alipay is a globally leading payment platform, trusted by users for its broad user base, mature payment technology, and robust security architecture. Together, the two have deeply merged Rokid Glasses' hardware and software advantages with Alipay's payment capabilities to create this innovative solution.

Leadership from both sides spoke highly of the partnership. Rokid founder and CEO Mingming Zhu said: "Payment capability on Rokid Glasses delivers a better user experience, while also leading the smart glasses industry into the payment era and setting a new benchmark for the sector. Behind this lies close collaboration between Rokid and Alipay on payments and security, and going forward we'll explore even more new experiences together."

Zhang Aijuan, Ant Group Vice President and Co-President of the Payment Business Group, said: "Rokid Glasses have created an entirely new user experience. Alipay will fully support the development of emerging industries to create more value for users."

Going forward, the two sides will further expand into more everyday convenience services. For example: quickly "looking" to pay when exiting a parking garage; voice-enabled mobile top-ups and utility bill payments; voice-activated ride-hailing and food ordering; and adding purchase needs to calendar reminders.

Looking ahead, smart glasses payments may be just the beginning of a future intelligent payment ecosystem. As technology advances and use cases expand, smart glasses could become an ever-present payment terminal in people's lives.