Visa and PopID partner to launch facial verification payments in the middle east

By Leandra Monteiro

PopID, a consumer authentication service, and Visa, a leader in digital payments, announced a partnership to collaborate on launching facial verification payment acceptance in the Middle East region. The goal of the partnership is to provide cardholders with new safe, secure, and innovative ways to pay.

The first operators to welcome PopPay (PopID’s facial biometric payment solution) in the market will be Costa Coffee, MMI, and grocery chain Géant, in addition to Cove Beach at Caesars Palace Dubai and Coca-Cola Arena Dubai, both of which belong to the portfolio of Dubai Holding, the diversified global investment company headquartered in Dubai, UAE.

In addition, to select brick-and-mortar businesses of Dubai Holding adopting PopPay as a new way to accept payments, PopID has recently signed an agreement with Dubai Holding to soon establish a joint venture that will support the roll-out of PopPay in the CEE and MENA regions.

During the initial phase of the partnership, Dubai Holding will deploy PopPay at some of its assets across its leading destinations and attractions, which will be followed by the adoption of the payment technology across Dubai Holding’s wider ecosystem and through partners across CEE and MENA region.

“Facial biometric payments are at the forefront of payments innovation, providing cardholders a fast, seamless and most importantly, secure way to authenticate and make a payment,” said Akshay Chopra, Head of Visa CEMEA Innovation & Design. “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.”

Under the alliance with Visa, issuing banks will be invited to join the platform and give their customers the ability to link their facial biometrics to their debit or credit cards to make payments; and acquiring banks will be offered the opportunity to distribute PopID’s proprietary face pay terminals to brick and mortar businesses.  “We expect face pay to become the global standard for payments, and we are determined to make PopPay the consumer brand that is used and trusted by people all over the world,” said John Miller, CEO of PopID.

Throughout 2022, the platform will look to further scale across the Middle East region by partnering with key merchants to provide this leading payments technology to consumers.  This second international deployment follows the launch of PopPay Japan through a joint venture with a subsidiary of SoftBank Corp.