NEC trials cashless payment by facial recognition

NEC Corporation announced a series of trials for cashless payment services using its facial recognition technologies at small shops inside its head office building in Tokyo. These trials are being conducted from late June to the end of August as a part of NEC’s initiatives to apply its biometrics authentication technologies, which have been recognized as the world’s most accurate, to a range of services, including cashless payment, aiming to enhance the reliability and convenience of the identification process.

This payment service uses NeoFace facial recognition technologies, featuring NEC’s facial recognition algorithm, which have been recognized as providing the world’s highest authentication accuracy (*). This enables identity verification by matching employees’ pre-registered facial images against the images taken by a camera that is installed near a point-of-sale (POS) terminal at the check-out counter inside a shop. With the introduction of this technology, retailers can provide shoppers with payment services, without using cash or credit cards.

During this trial, NEC analyzes authentication performance and operational workload under a wide range of conditions inside the shops, including the types of cameras in use, installation position, lighting, balance between security and convenience and others.

Fumiaki Matsubara, Senior Vice President, NEC Corporation said, „This trial will enable us to improve technological performance and to accumulate knowledge towards the commercialization of facial authentication-based payment services, thereby helping NEC to enhance FinTech services and ensure greater safety and security.”

In April 2016, NEC launched a large-scale trial of its „Walkthrough Facial Recognition System” at its head office. This biometrics system is capable of recognizing people in motion using facial recognition technology without the need for the subjects to stop in front of the camera. These cashless payment trials are the second round of NEC’s trial campaign to promote its biometrics authentication technologies.

Source: www.nec.com