Facial verification can be powerful and secure technology across many industries. Visa and PopID want to leverage this technology for payments across the Middle East. Building such a consumer-facing solution is the key to unlocking mass adoption.
Facial Verification For Consumer Payments
There are many ways to deal with payments today, although embracing new technologies is essential. Visa sees merit in new approaches, yet the jury is still out on how facial verification factors into that equation. Through a collaboration with PopID, the company aims to leverage people’s faces for payment authentication. It is a very limited trial run in a handful of locations, but it hints at the future.
For now, the trial will see participation from Costa Coffee, Geant, MMI, and Cove Beach locations at Caesars Palace Dubai and Coca-Cola Arena Dubai. It is normal to see a heavy Dubai-oriented focus on innovative payment solutions. Dubai is a prominent region where many merchants seem eager to experiment with new ideas, even if their future use remains up in the air.
Visa Cemea head of Innovation & Design Akshay Chopra adds:
“From across our partner network, we’ve seen heightened interest in co-creating new facial and biometric payments moments. Through this partnership with PopPay, we are keen to help clients roll out biometric payment capabilities faster and with more success.”
The partnership between PopID and Visa relies on finding partnering issuing banks. Moreover, these partners can give their customers limited access to link facial biometrics with a debit or credit card. Furthermore, banks can distribute PopID’s face pay terminals, should they decide to pursue that option. If this trial proves successful, getting brick-and-mortar businesses on board with facial verification for payments may finally gain more ground.
