Customers at superstores, supermarkets and convenience and cosmetics stores owned by Russian retail group Magnit can now authenticate contactless payments at self-checkout devices using pay-with-a-glance technology.

The retailer is piloting biometric payments at 10 of its outlets in the cities of Moscow, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don and plans to roll out the service to more than 100 stores “by June”.

The solution implements Sberbank’s pay-with-a-glance system that uses 3D face recognition technology and is available to Sberbank customers who have registered for and linked a payment card to the service.

“When checking out in a Magnit store where the technology is being tested, the customer just needs to select the ‘Pay with a Glance’ option on the keypad display and look at the tablet  — no other actions are required,” Magnit says.

“Preliminary results show that the payment process has accelerated several times and now takes only three seconds instead of 34 when paying cash and 15 in [the] case of cashless payment,” adds Magnit director Eduard Iryshkov.

“The decision on scaling will be taken once we examine customer feedback and [the] potential impact of the service on business performance.”

Sberbank launched its biometric pay-with-a-glance technology at more than 50 branches of X5’s Perekrestok supermarkets in March.

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