Moscow Metro is to enable passengers travelling on all the Russian capital’s metro lines to make contactless payments for their fare at station turnstiles using its FacePay biometric ticketing system. The latest news about the Moscow metro facepay find out below.

The transport network began testing the system with 1,000 registered passengers on its Line 4 services in August, adding the Solntsevskaya and Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya lines and expanding the pilot group to 7,000 passengers later that month.

A total of four Moscow Metro lines now support FacePay payments, with more than 15,000 passengers currently using the system.

Face Pay is to available across the whole network of the Moscow Metro, writes the city’s Deputy Mayor for Transport Maksim Liksutov in his personal column dedicated to the biometric payment technology currently tested in Moscow. According to Mr. Liksutov, more than 15 thousand passengers are now using Face Pay on four lines.

Maksim Liksutov outlines that the fare system in all Moscow transport has made a huge leap in technology and passenger convenience. The number of payments at the gates with a card or a smartphone has increased 213 times since 2017 when Moscow introduced the service at all stations.

Deputy Mayor adds that the Face Pay system does not allow passengers to pass through the gates with someone else’s photo due to the Liveness technology that distinguishes an ordinary photo from the face of a living person.

Testing is in full swing. I myself registered, uploaded a photo through the app and, to test it, passed with Face Pay several dozen times – there was not a single error. The cameras work, the recognition technology itself is reliable. We also conducted a special load test – this is when the testers pass with Face Pay for half an hour non-stop without a break. We see that the system is extremely convenient. Metro employees also now pass through the gates with this technology only,

– Maksim Liksutov.

Deputy Mayor Liksutov announced some of the prospects of the technology. In particular, other types of tickets might be integrated to Face Pay next year. Moreover, the technology might be implemented on other types of urban transport, namely MCC (Moscow Central Circle), MCD (Moscow Central Diameters), trams and buses. The other fare payment options will be maintained.

Besides Moscow metro facepay, other cities in Russia, including Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod, have introduced Face Pay, a biometric payment system for metro travel. Kazan, for example, started offering Face Pay as of 2023, with incentives like cashback for users. In addition to Russia, facial recognition payment systems are also being used in cities like Tokyo and regions of China and Kazakhstan.

China has extensively implemented such systems in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, while Japan has started deploying similar technology in major urban areas. This trend reflects a broader adoption of biometric payment technologies in public transport systems globally.