“Buy with your eyes, pay with your glance!”
After running pilot tests in Brazil and parts of the Asia Pacific for roughly two years, Mastercard is finally rolling out its biometric retail payments system in Europe. The world’s largest payment card company appears to be determined to wean consumers off not only cash, its eternal rival, but also credit and debit cards, its main line of business until now. To that end, it is piloting its Biometric Checkout Program in Poland in collaboration with local fintech company PayEye, which will be providing its iris and face biometric technology.
From the company’s press release, titled “Buy with your eyes, pay with your glance!”:
Mastercard’s global Biometric Checkout Program, represents a first-of-its-kind technology framework to help establish standards for new ways to pay, allowing cardholders to use a wide range of biometric payment authentication methods such as palm, face or iris scan. This simplifies the checkout process in store, as consumers no longer need to use a physical payment card, cash or a mobile device to pay for purchases. With Mastercard Biometric Checkout Program, secure and convenient experiences are possible simply by using your biometrics.
“Mastercard is a pioneer of innovative payment methods and drive security, and standardization and Poland is an (sic) perfect place for such a groundbreaking pilot,” said Marta Życińska, general manager Poland, Mastercard.
If you, like me, are wondering, “Why Poland?”, the answer is simple: Poles are apparently more inclined to adopt dystopian disruptive new technologies — at least according to Mastercard. From the industry publication, Biometrics Update:
The global payments giant says it chose Poland as its first European country to pilot the program because of its receptiveness to new technologies. According to their survey, four out of five Polish people say that they use or have used biometric technology while among the 18–25-year-olds category, almost all are familiar with using biometrics.
“Poland was one of the first countries where contactless payments with Mastercard cards were introduced and we know that Polish consumers are leaders in adopting innovative technologies,” says Marta Życińska, Mastercard’s general manager for Poland.
The pilots will be conducted in five stores in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań and Czeladź. Empik has over 350 stores across Poland.
This will be the first time Mastercard has piloted a Biometric Checkout Program in Europe. In May, 2022, the company unveiled to much fanfare plans to launch a pilot “biometric checkout program” in the UK, but that so far appears to have come to naught. Before testing the system on UK consumers, the company first trialled it in Brazil. It then expanded its pilot programs program to the Asia Pacific region and launched its second pilot in Latin America earlier this June.
JP Morgan Chase Joins the Race
Mastercard is not the only large financial institution testing out this still relatively nascent payment technology. The company’s largest rival (after cash, of course) and fellow duopolist, Visa, recently showcased its pay-by-palm biometric payment technology at an event in Singapore. During the event, visitors were invited to try out the palm reader and link their signature to their payment card for a transaction.
“The future of biometric payments is promising and is set to revolutionise the retail experience,” said Kunal Chatterjee, Head of Innovation at Visa Asia Pacific. But it may take time for the technology to reach critical mass. Various factors, he said, influence the level of acceptance of biometric payments, including regulation, technology and consumer priorities, which can vary from country to country.
The largest bank in the US, JP Morgan Chase, is also piloting both face and palm pay technologies, with a view to fully launching a biometric checkout service with its merchants early next year. Given JPM is the largest merchant acquirer in the US, processing around 37 billion transactions in 2022, the impact on the payments landscape in the US could be huge. According to Prashant Sharma, executive director of biometrics and identity solutions at JPMorgan, merchants are highly interested in tapping biometrics, “because everybody wants to provide a streamlined, personalized experience to the consumer.”
Biometrics have already seeped into many other aspects of everyday life, including travel and communication. Many national passports these days include biometric data. Hundreds of millions — perhaps even billions — of people use a biometric authentication factor, such as a fingerprint or face scan, to unlock their smartphones and other digital devices. Soon, biometric identifiers may even be necessary to log onto social media platforms.
In other words, people are already giving away their most private data to work, communicate, cross borders, or get on planes. Will they do the same to speed up their shopping experience?
It is far from clear. As we reported last year, a push back against biometric surveillance and control systems has been gathering momentum on both sides of the north Atlantic, particularly the Western one. In the US, a small but growing handful of cities, including New York, have passed biometrics laws. Likewise, a growing number of states have followed Illinois’ lead in passing laws that expressly govern the processing of biometric data. In Illinois alone, more than 1,000 class action lawsuits have been filed under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
In the UK, meanwhile, the unmanned store experience offered by Amazon has been such a flop that the company has had to begin opening stores with actual flesh-and-blood human beings serving customers. Across the English Channel, there have been murmurings of protests in Belgium, France and other countries. But despite this growing backlash, there is a sense of inevitability to all of this…
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Nick Corbishley 