CHONGQING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- An unmanned shop has attracted thousands of visitors at the on-going first Smart China Expo.

The expo runs from Thursday to Saturday in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, focusing on new products, technologies and modes in the global development of big data and intelligent industries.

"We didn't expect so many visitors waiting in line to use the self-service checkouts. We believe that the prospects of the smart shop market will be very bright in the future," said Deng Jie, who is in charge of the unmanned shop.

Without staff, the shop displays QR codes and customers use their smartphones to complete purchases.

The whole process, from entering the shop and scanning codes to paying for the products, uses technology such as face recognition, radio-frequency identification and consumption data analysis, according to Deng.

Deng said that more than 20,000 people visited to shop before the expo started.

"I heard about unmanned shops a long time ago, so I came here today to visit this particular shop. The shopping experience went smoothly and it's very convenient. I'm looking forward to more unmanned shops in our city," said Zhang Yingyi.

Deng said the technical team is developing face-detection technology to authorize payments instead of using phones.