Customers at a coffee shop in Budapest, Hungary, and a number of small city-centre retailers in Guadalajara, Spain, are piloting a biometric payment service which allows them to make payments at the point of sale using their face and palm without needing a card, smartphone or other mobile device.

Users register for the service by uploading a selfie and a picture of their palm via the service’s app on their iOS or Android device. They then link a bank card to complete payments via an integrated payments gateway.

“The actual in-store payment process is implemented by using a special point-of-sale machine, equipped with cameras and facial recognition software that scans customers’ faces and palms and compares them to the biometric template created in advance,” explains PeasyPay, the Hungarian startup that’s developed the technology.

“The combination of face and palm scanning solves the issue of mismatching a person, as facial recognition systems’ accuracy degree can vary significantly depending on the person, software and solution,” the company says.

It adds that the service complies with the requirements of Europe’s GDPR data protection law and is not dependent “on a proprietary infrastructure and ecosystem” and that “any bank and any merchant can join”.

Further pilots are planned for Glasgow Airport in the UK and at a restaurant in Slovenia, with a global app due “by the end of the year”.

PeasyPay was launched by the European digital innovation and entrepreneurship educational organisation EIT Digital, with support from Spain’s Ci3 Foundation and Liberbank, Hungary’s E-Group and OTP Bank, and Slovenia’s AV Living Lab.

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