Hungarian FinTech PeasyPay lets people pay via facial & palm recognition tech

By Megha Bhattacharya

Hungarian startup PeasyPay is enabling people to pay by just showing their faces and taking a picture of the palm of their hands. The company’s system was first launched in Budapest and is now being piloted in Guadalajara, Spain, Slovenia and the UK. PeasyPay was launched by EIT Digital, in partnership with two Spanish partners, Ci3 and Liberbank, two Hungarian ones, E-Group and OTP Bank, and Slovenia’s AV Living Lab.

“The system is composed of three elements,” PeasyPay’s product leader Csaba Körmöczi explained, “a smartphone app for the customer (used only during registration), a smartphone app for the merchants, and the payment terminal.”

The company stated that digital profiles of the customers’ palms and faces are created through the app by taking a selfie and a picture of their palm with their mobile’s camera. Customers will then have to register their bank card details on an integrated payment gateway. The actual in-store payment process is implemented by using a point-of-sale (POS) machine, equipped with cameras and facial recognition software that scans customers’ faces and palms and compare them to the biometric template created in advance. In the case of a match, the payment is authorised, and the amount charged to the credit card registered in the payment gateway of the corresponding PeasyPay account.

The PeasyPay solution is fully compliant with all European regulations, especially GDPR and national data protection laws. Under GDPR’s provisions, the processing of biometric data for uniquely identifying purposes is not authorized, unless the data subject has given explicit consent for a specified purpose.

The company stated that during the pilot phase only customers based in Hungary, Spain, Slovenia and the UK will be able to download PeasyPay from their local app store. By the end of the year, the app will be rolled out globally.