Rumor: Facial recognition can verify PayPal payments

Peter Arnold

PayPal is testing a new facial recognition to verify credit payments on cellphones.

Can you use your face and smartphone to make payments at certain stores, thanks to a new payment system that tests walletless shopping?

TRUE: But it's still limited and early in the game

You don't need your wallet if you shop at certain stores testing a new PayPal app that's prompting buzz. You instead can pay with your face and your phone.

Basically, it works this way: You download the PayPal app, which shows a list of participating stores. Upon entering a store, just check in on your phone by using a four-digit PIN. Done shopping? A clerk will see your photo and first name on his or her phone or tablet and click on your picture to charge your PayPal account.

"We very much see this as the future of money. By 2016, you'll be able to leave your wallet at home," Rob Harper, PayPal's London-based head of retail services, told The Telegraphin a video report. It's backed by the same security that PayPal has for online purchases, Harper told the BBC, so if the company thinks something looks suspicious, it will take steps.

It's getting buzz for being tested at a dozen merchants on the outskirts of London, such as Noble Jones fashion clothing store, where owner George Absi finds the system "quite useful. You can make payment anywhere in the store. You don't have to bring the customer the bill," he said in a promotional video.

Related: Creepy/cool technology will turn your face into your credit card

Where can you use it?

A UK-based PayPal spokesperson told MSN News "it is already available in the US," but we're unclear where, so we're trying to get details. (From what we can tell so far, it looks like a different PayPal mobile-payment system in the U.S. is offered at two dozen chains and typically works as it does at The Home Depot — you pay with PayPal at the cash register by typing in a mobile number and PIN or by swiping a PayPal payment card and entering a PIN, according to PayPal's website.)

Could this cashless, credit-cardless advancement tested in Britain one day improve your life? Depends on how much hassle you consider cash and credit cards to be. Ubergizmoputs it in a snarky way:

"If you’re lucky enough to have your popular retailer accept PayPal while you’re checking out in the store, then you know what a slight hassle it can be to have to input your password or passcode, which can add seconds to your entire transaction, and as a result, can turn your life completely upside down. That’s why PayPal is testing out a new method of verifying its users by using a photo of them as verification."

Yup, we're talking first-world problems.