The Future of Retail: Paying With Your Face?A Finnish company says it has developed a system that eliminates the need for cash or credit at check out. All it needs is a look at your face.
ByJason Fell•
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Leave your pocket full of coins at home. A Finnish startup calledUniqulhas created a payment system that is built on facial-recognitiontechnology, without a need for cash or credit cards. Translation: This thing will let you pay with your face.
Yes, your face.
Customers who sign up with Uniqul will register a major credit card or information for a PayPal account. In stores that carry the Uniqul scanner, all anyone would need to do is stand next to the terminal, look into the camera and press OK. That's it. Essentially, the technology analyzes footage of a person's face, creates a numerical code based on its measurements, and then checks it against its database of users.
#insert related here# Expected to launch this fall, the service will be available to users for a monthly subscription fee. For businesses, the basic service is likely to be free. According to TechWeek Europe, Uniqul isprimarily targeted at small businessesin the hospitality sector, and will "enable them to offer targeted incentives."
Uniqul的创始人,目标是速度p the check-out process from approximately 30 secondsto fewer than five seconds, the company says on its website. A tool like this could be good for businesses that get high amounts of foot traffic.
And there is already evidence that retail shops are tapping into facial-recognition technology. A U.K.-based company calledNEC IT Solutionsoffers a tool that can scan people's faces as they walk in the door, identify celebrities or other important customers and then notify staff about their presence in the store. The technology can evenprovide store owners with detailslike the person's dress size, favorite types of items or shopping history, London'sSunday Timesreported. The technology is apparently being tested in a number of stores and hotels in the U.S. and the U.K., among other locations.
Sounds wonderfully useful -- if not completely creepy. Given our increasingly elevated awareness of privacy issues, paying with your face may not become a widely-adopted practice -- in the immediate future, anyway.
