Face Pay, a large-scale facial ID payment system, has been launched by the Moscow Metro
Face Pay, as the name implies, allows metro riders in Moscow to pay their fares using face recognition.
On Friday, Moscow’s mammoth metro network debuted a fee payment system based on face recognition technology at its more than 240 stations, the first of its type in the world, according to officials.
Moscow, with a population of 12.7 million people, has one of the biggest video surveillance systems in the world. Face recognition technology has been used to enforce COVID-19 quarantines, and protestors at political demonstrations have claimed that police have used it to conduct preventative arrests and detentions.
Commuters will soon be able to pay their fare using face recognition at turnstiles equipped with cameras, thanks to a technology known as “Face Pay.”
In a statement, Maxim Liksutov, head of the Russian capital’s transportation department, stated, “Moscow is the only city in the world where this system is working on such a scale.”
The usage of “Face Pay” was voluntary, according to Liksutov, and other payment methods were still in use.
Commuters must submit their photo and link them to their transportation and bank cards via the Moscow Metro apps before utilizing the system. Commuters who have signed up for “Face Pay” just need to glance into a camera set up at a specific turnstile to ride the metro.
Commuter data would be encrypted, according to the city’s transportation agency. Digital rights organizations, on the other hand, believe the system might jeopardize privacy and human rights.
Face Pay might be used for monitoring, according to Roskomsvoboda, a nonprofit committed to safeguarding digital rights and freedom of information.
In 2018, when Russia hosted the World Cup, the Moscow mayor’s office stated that facial recognition technology will be installed in the subway to help police catch wanted offenders.
