Revolut completes UK ‘Pay With Smile’ facial recognition payments pilot

Revolut has completed a three-day UK pilot of its Pay with Smile facial recognition checkout, giving customers at selected London cafés the ability to make in-store payments simply by looking at a point-of-sale terminal.

Revolut completes UK ‘Pay With Smile’ Pilot

The trial ran from 24 to 26 September at Kiss the Hippo locations in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho, testing whether biometric authentication can be combined with account-to-account payments to remove the need for a card, phone or wallet at checkout.

Customers taking part first opted in through the Revolut app. At the terminal, they selected Pay with Smile and completed a facial identity check, which was matched against the selfie-based verification used when they originally opened their Revolut account.

If the match succeeded, the payment was authorised directly.

Identity Moves Deeper Into the Payment Journey

Revolut is effectively combining identity, authentication and payment initiation into a single checkout flow.

Rather than using biometrics simply to unlock a device before payment, the customer’s face becomes the authentication mechanism at the point of sale itself.

Revolut said facial recognition data was protected through end-to-end encryption and that merchants did not store customers’ personal information. Participation was opt-in, with customers able to withdraw consent through the Revolut app.

That consent model is particularly important because biometric information raises different privacy considerations from conventional cards or mobile wallets.

Zero Processing Fees Challenge Traditional Acceptance Costs

The commercial proposition was just as significant as the technology.

Revolut offered 0% processing fees for Pay with Smile transactions completed through its Register terminal, positioning the model as a lower-cost alternative to conventional card acceptance.

The company says independent venues spend an average of £875 a month on payment processing and infrastructure, rising above £950 for pubs and bars. It also estimates terminal outages cost smaller businesses around £2,495 in lost revenue annually.

Register combines payments and hospitality functions in a two-screen terminal and includes an eSIM backup intended to reduce connectivity failures.

During the pilot, customers using Pay with Smile could buy selected speciality coffees for £1 and earn triple RevPoints, giving Revolut an additional incentive to encourage consumers to try the unfamiliar payment method.

The Real Test Comes After the Pilot

With the London trial now concluded, the more important question is what Revolut learned from it.

A limited three-day promotion cannot establish whether consumers will routinely choose facial recognition over cards, contactless wallets or QR-based payments once incentives disappear.

Nor has Revolut yet disclosed transaction volumes, customer adoption rates or whether merchants experienced materially faster checkout.

The pilot nevertheless provides an interesting test of where in-store payments may be heading.

For merchants, biometric payments promise faster transactions and potentially lower costs. For consumers, success will depend on whether convenience is strong enough to overcome concerns around privacy, security and control.

The technology has now been tested in a live retail environment, what matters next is whether paying with a face can move from novelty to normal behaviour.