Slush Helsinki brought 25,000 guests, 3,500 startups, and 2,000 investors all together at the Helsinki Expo Convention Center, showcasing new solutions, technology, and products. One of the solutions demonstrated was a facial recognition payment service, Pivo Face Payment. As described by BiometricUpdate:
“Customers downloaded the Pivo Face Pay application to make biometric payments with an associated credit or debit card using only facial recognition. A POS tablet with a biometric camera system shows the transaction total and gives customers the opportunity to accept or deny it, before processing the payment. Face payment was supported for Visas and Mastercards issued by any bank, for customers with a mobile device running iOS 11.0 or later.”
A similar concept to Apple’s face-id authentication, the POS tablet equipped with a camera, identifies the customers face and subsequently sends the image over a network to compare it to the biometric template that was created by the user before. The template also contains the pre-loaded payment method (Visa or Mastercard).
If the match is successful, the transaction is approved by the customer at the point of sale and is processed. Those that did not bring their wallet, phone, or any other payment methods with them can check out with nothing but their faces. Although facial biometrics solutions can reduce payment friction at the point of sale, the amount of personal data stored and handled is increased and requires enhanced security.
Overview by David Nelyubin, Resaerch Analyst at Mercator Advisory Group