Nets, a European digital payments firm, is launching a trial of facial recognition for payments for up to 1,000 office workers in Copenhagen. 

The program will allow up to 1,000 people working at 25 companies at an office community in Vibenshushet to link their face to an employee ID card and pay for their lunch at the Kokkenes Kokkens cafeteria. 

Company officials said that facial recognition provides some unique capabilities to authenticate identity as opposed to other biometric methods. 

"Many biometric modalities require special purpose devices — e.g., fingerprint or eye scanner — whereas facial recognition only requires an off-the-shelf webcam and Internet connection," Jesper Kildegaard Poulsen, head of creation lab, Nets, told Mobile Payments Today via email. "This of course makes the solution easier to install and less expensive compared to alternative biometric systems."

Nets launched a finger vein biometric pilot at the Copenhagen Business School in 2018 and so far more than 22,000 transactions have been completed. 

Cover image: Nets.

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