Nets has launched a pilot programme testing facial recognition as a payment method.

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

Jesper Kildegaard Poulsen, head of the digital payment provider's creation lab, commented: “Today, we have the technology to use faces as identification and validation when making a payment - however, how people feel about having their faces scanned is still under question.

"This trial will help us to learn more about consumer attitudes to facial recognition payments.”

Nets claimed that the solution being trialled is easy for merchants to install, requiring just a tablet with a pre-installed webcam and app.

Kildegaard Poulsen added: “Merchants offering self-service solutions would be the most obvious adopters of facial recognition technology, imagine the solution at a burger bar where you are recognised at the self-service counter and asked: ‘Do you want the same meal as last time, Jesper?’; this is where we see the largest potential.”

The trial at Vibenshuset is not the first time that Nets has piloted technology to understand how people perceive and react to biometric authentication. In April 2018, the FinTech launched a finger vein payments pilot at Copenhagen Business School, through which more than 22,000 transactions have been completed so far.

Share Story: