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Nets trials facial-recognition payments

Photo courtesy Nets.

December 18, 2019

Under the tagline "Hungry? Face it," Nets, a Nordic provider of digital payment services, has launched a pilot testing facial recognition as a payment method, the company announced via a press release Monday. 

Around 1,000 people — all working at Vibenshuset, an office community of 25 companies in Copenhagen — can sign up to participate in the pilot. By linking their face with their employee ID card, they can pay for their lunch using their face at Kokkenes Køkken's cafeteria.

"We are used to bringing something with us each time we need to make a payment — cash, card or a device. But maybe it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could pay by just showing up?" Jesper Kildegaard Poulsen, Net's head of creation lab, said in the release. 

Nets said the solution it is trialing is easy for merchants to install, requiring just a tablet with a pre-installed webcam and app. The payments firm sees merchants offering self-service solutions as the most obvious adopters of facial recognition technology. One scenario it envisions is a burger bar that instantly recognizes a customer at a self-service counter and asks: "Do you want the same meal as last time?"

The problem with facial recognition, however, is that not everyone wants to have their face stored in a database. One aim of the Net's pilot study is to better understand people's attitudes to facial recognition, the company said.  

In April 2018, Nets launched a finger vein payments pilot at Copenhagen Business School, through which more than 22,000 transactions have been completed so far.

Biometrics plays a promising role in the future of ATM security, too. In Spain, CaixiaBank has been rolling out facial recognition at its ATM machines.