Alipay, the payments unit of e-commerce giant Alibaba, will enable Chinese users of the iPhone 5s running iOS 8 to authenticate online payments by leaving their fingerprint, according to China Business News.

Fingerprint-based payments via Alipay are already possible with the Huawei Mate 7, as well as Samsung’s Galaxy S5.

The report mentions the iPhone 5s as enabling Alipay payments, although not the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus,  iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3.  All these devices also feature Apple’s Touch ID sensor.

Payments via the iPhone 5s are capped by Alipay at CNY1,000 ($162) per day. A transaction over this limit needs additional authentication via passwords.

Fingerprint verification is carried out locally, not by uploading data to a third party. In fact, the whole process is carried out via iPhone chips.

Jiang Long, manager of Alipay, said fingerprint access methods boast much higher safety due to their uniqueness. Biological identification is the future direction for mobile payments, he said.

In a similar line of thinking, Alipay is also working with Face++, which specialises in facial recognition technology.