European customers will soon be able to shop, choose what they want and pay without having a smartphone, credit or debit card with them.

PeasyPay, a start-up incorporated in Hungary and launched by EIT Digital, is letting people pay by just showing their faces and taking a picture of the palm of their hands according to a press release.

"The system is composed of three elements; a smartphone app for the customer, which is only used only during registration, a smartphone app for the merchant and the payment terminal," Csaba Körmöczi, product leader for PeasyPay said in the release.

Digital profiles of the customers' palms and faces are created through the app, which is available on both Android and iOS, by taking a selfie and a picture of their palm with a camera in a mobile device. Users then have to register their bank card details on an integrated, secure payment 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.

In the case of a match, the payment is authorized, and the amount charged to the credit card registered in the payment gateway of the user's PeasyPay account.

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 situation.

The PeasyPay solution is fully compliant with all European regulations, especially GDPR and national data protection laws. Under GDPR's provisions, the processing of biometric data for uniquely identifying purposes is not authorized, unless the data subject has given explicit consent for a specified purpose.

Another factor that makes the start-up's technology stand out is that PeasyPay is based on an open system; any bank and any merchant can join.

During the pilot phase only customers based in Hungary, Spain, Slovenia and the UK were able to download PeasyPay from a local app store. By the end of the year, the app will be rolled out globally.