NEC and SoftBank Units Put Face Payment Into the PayCAS Terminal

NEC has linked its cloud face recognition service to PayCAS, the multi-payment terminal operated by SB Payment Service and SB C&S, letting a shopper pay by presenting their face rather than a card or phone.

Customers register a facial image and credit card details in advance through a dedicated site. At the counter they face the camera, and the transaction runs without producing a card or unlocking a handset.

PayCAS itself is a single compact terminal that already handles credit cards, electronic money and QR codes, sold as a one-stop route into cashless acceptance for merchants who would otherwise assemble several systems.

A trial is running from 1 September to 30 November at Cafe Shiba, the staff canteen in SoftBank’s Takeshiba headquarters in Tokyo. The companies expect more than 1,000 face recognition payments over that period and are using it to test the whole path from facial enrolment through to a completed payment, along with day-to-day operability.

The stated problem is throughput at the till. Cash, credit cards and QR or barcode payments now coexist in Japanese retail, which the companies say complicates checkout work and lengthens queues. Falling workforce numbers make that harder to staff around, and contactless biometric payment is being positioned as a way to shorten each transaction.

The service combines NEC’s Bio-IDiom Services for SaaS with SB Payment Service’s payment platform, which handles the contracts and settlement with each payment provider on the merchant’s behalf. NEC cites multiple first-place finishes in the face recognition benchmark tests run by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, noting that NIST results do not constitute a US government endorsement.

The work extends a strategic partnership in biometrics that SoftBank and NEC agreed in July 2024, and is intended to move that arrangement into payments using SoftBank group corporate customers and sales channels.

The companies said they are also examining links to other services from the same face enrolment, including office entry and exit management and system login.

NEC said it will continue to prioritise privacy and respect for human rights in how it applies biometrics, a line the company has attached to its face recognition business as deployments have widened. Elsewhere in the region, South Korean convenience stores launched the FacePay system built by Viva Republica last year.

Sources: NEC

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team