Pay with just your face. No phone. No card. No hassle.
FacePay is a contactless payment system built around on-device facial recognition. The goal: let someone complete a transaction without pulling anything out of their pocket. No NFC tap, no QR scan, no PIN. Just a face.
The Problem
Most contactless payment solutions still require the user to have their phone on them, unlocked, and held near a terminal. For micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) like market stalls, food courts, and roadside vendors, this creates friction on both sides. The merchant often lacks proper POS infrastructure, and the customer is fumbling through pockets.
FacePay targets that gap: fast, frictionless transactions for environments where traditional payment rails don't fit cleanly.
How It Works
- Enrolment -- The user registers their face and links it to a payment account through the app.
- Recognition -- At the point of sale, the merchant's device captures the customer's face and runs local inference to match against enrolled identities.
- Authorisation -- A match triggers a payment request, confirmed with a liveness check to prevent spoofing.
- Settlement -- The transaction is logged and settled through the payment backend.
All face matching happens on-device using Apple's Vision framework. Biometric data never leaves the hardware. The merchant terminal only receives a cryptographic confirmation token, not any raw facial data.
On-Device Privacy
The privacy model was a central design decision. Storing facial embeddings on a server creates a single point of failure and a high-value target. Running inference locally means:
- No biometric data sent over the network
- No central database of faces to breach
- Compliance is simpler because sensitive data never leaves the user's device
PayHack 2025
FacePay was built for PayHack 2025, a fintech hackathon focused on payment innovation. It received the Consolation Prize, recognised for its privacy-first architecture and practical applicability to MSME payment infrastructure in the region.