Russia’s banks work to boost Unified Biometric System

Russia’s largest bank Sberbank and the National Payment Card System (NSPK), operator of the Mir payment system, plan to combine face payment services in the second half of 2025 with clients required to register their data in the Unified Biometric System, the two sides announced on Monday.

Clients will be able to connect to a single system from the application of any bank, as well as use a wide network of Sber’s terminals. The initiative, which is expected to increase the popularity of biometric services, has received support from the Central Bank, according to Russian newspaper Izvestia.

“The project’s roadmap has already been developed, and the launch is planned for the second half of the year,” said Dmitry Malykh, head of Sber’s B2C Transactional Banking unit. “We are developing a biometric payment standard, based on which other market participants will be able to launch their biometric services.”

Russia has been working on boosting the use of biometric technology across sectors with the help of the Unified Biometric System. The state information system stores biometric data for authentication and identification during access to public and banking services.

According to Russian law, commercial entities are required to transfer previously collected biometric data to the UBS. Despite this measure, the Unified Biometric System has not yet reached 3 million users, according to figures released by the Center for Biometric Technologies (CBT) on Monday.

Banking has been a key sector in propping up the use of the national biometric database. The government, for instance, signed a law in December mandating banks to enable customers to open accounts and obtain loans remotely with the help of biometrics.

State-owned Sberbank has promised to introduce several new biometric-based financial services in 2025. Its payment service SberPay allows customers to pay by smile on more than 900,000 biometric terminals across the country. The number is expected to grow to one million by the end of the year.

The bank is also hoping that the infrastructure will be used for sales of age-restricted goods or registering at hotels. The joining of the Sber and NSPK systems should also make it cheaper for other banks to launch such services.

Article Topics

banking  |  biometric database  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  identity management  |  Russia  |  Unified Biometrics System