Revolut launches face biometrics payments to new retail POS system

Revolut is introducing face biometrics for retail payment authentication for UK hospitality businesses, and offering the service to merchants with 0 percent processing fees.

The new Pay with Smile service provides in-store checkout with facial recognition as a feature service of new hospitality-centric point-of-sale (POS) terminal Revolut Register.

An initial pilot has launched exclusively at Kiss the Hippo cafes across the UK.

The fintech and UK-licensed bank selected Fourthline to provide KYC checks during customer onboarding last year. Revolut has also historically used face biometrics from Onfido, which was acquired by Entrust in 2024.

Customers enroll their selfie biometrics with Revolut through its mobile app, so one of the above technology providers or a combination of them are involved at that stage.

Revolut says it gets a new revenue stream from its biometric checkouts, while merchants can offer a better payment experience to customers and reduce fees at the same time, according to the announcement. Merchants in the UK pay 875 pounds (roughly US$1,160) per month on average, and more in hospitality, for payments processing and infrastructure.

Consumers get a friction-free payment experience without using their phone, digital wallet or card. Pay with Smile also provides bank grade security with end-to-end encryption.

Smiling away friction from digital payments

More than half of people in Britain have experienced checkout friction in the form of payment delays and failures from dropped merchant internet signals, according to Revolut Business General Manager of Merchant Payments Alex Codina.

“To solve this, we’re deploying Revolut’s full technological ecosystem to reinvent the mechanics of the hospitality industry and give consumers the payments experience they deserve,” he says. “By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we’ll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points.”

Revolut Register comes with a backup eSIM to maintain connectivity during network failures that would otherwise cause disruptions.

“In hospitality, a seamless checkout is no longer a luxury, it’s the bare minimum,” says Kiss the Hippo Managing Director Alex Damgaci in the company announcement. “Technology that takes the friction out of the payment process and offers payment flexibility gives operators the reliability they need to protect revenue and maintain guest satisfaction.

Kiss the Hippo has rolled out the pilot in three stores, ahead of a potential rollout across all 12 locations later this year, yahoo finance reports.

The team of former Revolut employees behind palm biometric payments startup Five ID , which targets restaurants as well as shops and gyms, raised $6 million to accelerate their system’s rollout earlier this year.

There are also similarly-named biometric retail payment systems in China and Russia, and business offering similar technologies in other countries including Brazil and the U.S.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  POS  |  retail biometrics  |  Revolut  |  selfie biometrics