FacePOS brings biometric point-of-sale system to Ireland’s Central Bank sandbox

Irish fintech FacePOS is developing a point‑of‑sale instant payment system that relies on AI‑driven face biometrics.

The company has been accepted into the Central Bank of Ireland’s Innovation Sandbox Programme for Innovation in Payments, which supports firms testing new approaches to secure, real‑time payments.

CEO James Hannigan hailed the program’s benefits as they recently partnered with Payemoji, a fellow CBI Sandbox member, to provide payment services, reports the Irish Independent.

FacePOS enables instant account‑to‑account payments at checkout, offering an alternative to card‑based transactions. Instead of tapping or inserting a card, users authenticate using face biometrics. The system incorporates liveness detection to prevent spoofing and includes proximity checks and confirmation‑of‑payee controls.

The company was founded by Hannigan with CFO Paddy Bolger, formerly of cybersecurity firm CWSI. FacePOS says its biometric approach removes several intermediaries involved in card payments, which it argues could reduce fraud exposure and operational costs. On its website, the startup prides itself on its “simple, transparent pricing” for businesses and customers.

FacePOS is recognized by the European Payments Council, the European Third Party Payments Association and the Central Bank of Ireland for its work on instant payments at the point of interaction. It is also part of Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start‑Up programme and is currently fundraising.

Its leadership recently joined other Sandbox participants at an event hosted by the Central Bank in Dublin, and earlier took part in a closed‑door roundtable at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, where officials promoted it as a potential base for regional fintech expansion.

Hannigan said the next year will be focused on regulatory engagement, scaling operations and further fundraising as the company continues testing its biometric payment model within the Central Bank’s sandbox environment. FacePOS employs around 30 staff globally.

Article Topics

biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  FacePOS  |  financial services  |  Ireland  |  POS