Revolut is launching facial recognition payments in the United Kingdom

Users of the fintech platform Revolut will be able to make payments at cafes or stores using facial recognition technology. Revolut is currently testing this feature in the United Kingdom in an effort to attract more business customers, according to Bloomberg, citing a company statement.

A pilot project by the Revolut payment system will allow customers to pay for purchases at stores, cafes, and other establishments by scanning their faces. The system at the register will verify the customer’s face against the biometric data they provided when registering their Revolut account. The service will be free for retailers—the company does not plan to charge them a fee for processing payments.

“We’re replacing outdated, fragmented point-of-sale systems with a highly efficient payment system that solves problems for both shoppers and merchants,” said Alex Kodina, general manager of Revolut’s business payments division, commenting on the system’s launch.

The first fintech partner in the project was the Kiss the Hippo chain of coffee shops and coffee stores. The full launch of the system is scheduled for the end of this year.

The point-of-sale technology, which Revolut began rolling out, features “bank-grade security” and uses end-to-end encryption during authentication, the company said. Merchants will not store customers’ personal data and will not have access to it—it will remain with Revolut. The system is integrated into the fintech company’s point-of-sale solution, which includes built-in redundancy in case of failures or outages.

A few weeks ago, Revolut experienced a data breach: hackers compromised an Italian government email system and communicated with representatives of the fintech company for several months while posing as employees of the Italian Ministry of the Interior. The incident led to the disclosure of confidential information belonging to nearly 700 customers, the Financial Times reported.

The launch of biometric payments is part of a broader strategy by fintech companies, including Revolut, to expand their presence in the business banking sector. They offer merchants new terminals and equipment that reduce the costs of accepting cash and cards. Attempts to speed up the checkout process have been made before. For example, Mastercard promoted its contactless PayPass technology as early as the 2000s, but it took years for it to become widely adopted. More recently, JPMorgan Chase tested payments using palm and facial recognition, and Amazon rolled out systems in some of its stores that allowed shoppers to bypass cashiers, but later scaled back the project.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor