Forget cash. Leave the credit cards at home. Shoppers in Finland have a new means of paying for their purchases — with their faces.
The New York Post reported that Finnish consumers may in fact be the first group of people in the world to be able to pay for their purchases using facial recognition technology. The company, Uniqul, provides the stores with the service, which calls for customers to peer into a camera. The company then links the shopper’s facial features to his or her bank account, and notes the withdrawal.
It’s at least as fast as swiping a credit card, The New York Post reported.
The company says its technology is secure — and that it uses military-level algorithms that can withstand hack attacks. Technology geeks think it won’t be long before most stores in Australia latch on to the new payment method, The New York Post reported. It’s similar to what’s already used at Australian airports, by international travelers.
“The face is a PIN and it’s more like a complete way to identify a person and to provide access to the person’s own Cloud wallet,” said Uniqul’s Ruslan Pisarenko, in The New York Post. “But in some cases where the system is not 100 percent accurate, it will ask a person to input their PIN as security.”
Mr. Pisarenko said the technology could even differentiate between identical twins. Customers sign up for the service and input their information, which is then stored in company databases.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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