Moscow said its metro network has launched a fare payment system using facial recognition technology at its more than 240 stations.
Moscow, a city of 12.7 million, has one of the world’s largest video-surveillance systems. It has used facial recognition technology to enforce COVID-19 quarantines, and protesters attending political rallies have also said police have used it to make preventive arrests and detentions.

The authorities are now giving commuters the option to use facial recognition to pay their fare with a system called Face Pay at turnstiles equipped with cameras, Reuters reported.

“To enter the metro, passengers do not need a card or a smartphone. They need to look at the camera on the turnstile,” Deputy Moscow Mayor for Transport, Maxim Liksutov, said in a statement.

The official said he expected the system dubbed Face Pay to be used by 10 to 15 percent of passengers within the next two to three years.

He added that signing up to the system, which requires a bank account that has metro riders’ biometric data on file, is voluntary.

Earlier this year, the Kommersant business newspaper reported that authorities are hoping to increase the number of people who have signed over their biometric data from around 160,000 to 70 million over the next two years.

Moscow is the first city in the world where this system is operating on such a scale. The use of Face Pay was voluntary and that other payment methods remained in use.

Prior to using the system, commuters must submit their picture and link it to their transport and bank cards via the Moscow Metro application. To use the metro, commuters registered with Face Pay need to look into a camera set up at a designated turnstile.

The city’s transport department said commuters’ data would be encrypted securely. Digital rights groups, however, say the system could undermine privacy and human rights.

Roskomsvoboda, a group dedicated to protecting digital rights and freedom of information, has warned that Face Pay could be used for surveillance purposes.

The Moscow mayor’s office had rolled out a facial recognition system in the metro to spot criminals in 2018, when Russia hosted the soccer World Cup.

Moscow authorities have allocated $12 million to purchase and install across the city’s sprawling metro system high-definition cameras that can recognize faces and track fast movements, media reported on Thursday.

Moscow in recent years has developed a vast network of some 100,000 facial recognition cameras, sparking concerns from activists over state surveillance.

According to a tender on the government’s procurement website, authorities will purchase video surveillance cameras to be installed at 85 metro stations that will be able to auto-focus, shoot in high definition and recognize faces.