J.P. Morgan and PopID transform the in-store shopping experience

J.P. Morgan and PopID have joined forces to modernize in-store payments using biometrics. Their new partnership will enable customers to pay without a phone or credit card, thanks to the use of facial recognition technology. The rise of biometric payments is part of a wider trend towards significant modernization of transactions, including in-store.

FACTS

• J.P. Morgan Payments has announced an enhanced partnership with PopID, a biometric payment and identification solution based on facial recognition, to deploy biometric payments in pilot stores in the United States.
• This facial recognition payment system will enable customers in these stores to pay for their purchases without having to take out their phone or credit card, offering an ever smoother checkout experience.
• To use the service, customers are invited to register by taking a photo of their face and associating it with a template, encrypted and stored securely in the PopID cloud. When a purchase is then initiated, the template from the scan of their face by a camera installed at the checkout is compared with the template stored in the cloud, and the merchant receives a match validation to validate the payment.
• Early adopters include retailers such as restaurant chain Whataburger, which has already seen an improvement in customer engagement and transaction speed thanks to this system.

CHALLENGES

• Reinforcing security and data protection: The introduction of biometric payments raises crucial questions around security and user acceptance. While this technology promises increased convenience and an improved customer experience, it also relies on the use and protection of sensitive biometric data. Companies like J.P. Morgan Payments and PopID are precisely committed to ensuring that this data is stored securely and that customers are well informed of their rights, including the ability to opt out of the program at any time.
• Accelerating payment: The main objective behind the deployment of these technological solutions is to accelerate increasingly frictionless payment solutions. In fact, according to PopID, this technology can reduce order and payment times by 90 seconds per transaction, and increase shopping basket size by 4%.
• An adoption issue: JP Morgan states that the integration of biometric payment

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• In the payments market, technological innovation is a key driver of competition, with traditional players such as J.P. Morgan Payments seeking to position themselves against more agile fintechs. The partnership with PopID demonstrates a strategy of integrating new technologies to remain competitive and meet the expectations of a customer base increasingly focused on transaction speed and security.
• Deployment of this type of solution is continuing around the world, but still represents a challenge. In France, for example, Carrefour has had to postpone the deployment of its palm recognition payment solution, originally scheduled for last July.