Tobu Department Store will begin accepting face-authentication payments throughout its main store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district on November 19, using SAKULaLa, the biometric authentication service that Tobu Railway runs with Hitachi. Tobu Department Store and Tobu Railway said, citing their own research, that it is the first such service at a department store.
The service will cover the whole store except some event and other shops, including the renovated eatobu food floor on the second basement level, which reopens the same day.
Shoppers first register as SAKULaLa members and enroll their face and credit card details. At checkout they tell staff they will pay with SAKULaLa, complete face authentication at the terminal, enter the last four digits of their registered phone number and choose the card to charge. Customers who register a Tobu Card earn TOBU POINT automatically, as they would when presenting the card.
Tobu added SAKULaLa’s face authentication function to the JET-S general-purpose payment terminals already installed in the store rather than replacing them, and plans to introduce the service at its Funabashi store as well. Face payment provider DXYZ is taking a similar route, bringing FreeiD Pay to existing stera terminals used by Sumitomo Mitsui Card merchants.
From November 19 to December 25, customers paying with SAKULaLa at the Ikebukuro store can earn bonus TOBU POINT, ranging from 1,000 points for purchases of 10,000 yen or more to 10,000 points for purchases of 100,000 yen or more.
SAKULaLa lets users register personal attributes, such as age, membership details, credit card numbers and transit IC card numbers, alongside finger vein or face biometrics, then call up that information by presenting a finger or their face at participating businesses for identity checks or payment. One registration works across supermarkets, hotel check-in, office and sports club entry and railway gates, including the walk-through face recognition gates at Ikebukuro Station that use the same service.
The service launched in April 2024 and had about 24,000 registered users as of October, according to Tobu Railway. Its biometric authentication runs on Hitachi’s integrated biometric authentication platform service, which supports Hitachi’s Public Biometric Infrastructure, or PBI.
Tobu Railway said it plans to extend SAKULaLa across the Tobu group and other commercial facilities, and to work with partners to broaden its use for identity verification and payment across more industries and services.
Sources: Tobu Railway
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
