Revolut has switched on facial recognition payments in the UK. Pay with Smile went live today, letting Revolut customers settle a bill by looking at a till instead of tapping a card, phone or watch.
The mechanics are simple. Customers opt in through the Revolut app, and the feature checks their face against the verification selfie they took when they first signed up to Revolut, approving the payment without a wallet, phone or card in sight. It’s live in the UK from today, with 0% merchant fees on every Pay with Smile transaction and triple RevPoints for the customer paying this way. I’ve grown to like RevPoints, so that alone would encourage me to try this.
The whole thing runs on Revolut Register, a new two screen hospitality till with a built in eSIM as a connectivity backup, and Revolut is offering merchants their first terminal for £349.50 + VAT, about half the usual £699 + VAT, a special offer available until 31 December 2026. There’s no Irish price or date yet. Indeed Pay with Smile is UK only for now, with no word yet on an Irish rollout, but I’ve asked.
Revolut’s own privacy documentation for the feature says the camera converts a customer’s face into a one off, encrypted facial embedding that’s deleted immediately once the payment is authorised. A separate copy of the checkout photo is kept for fraud and dispute handling under Revolut’s normal data retention rules, and customers can freeze or fully withdraw from Pay with Smile at any point, which wipes the stored biometric template. If the face match fails, the customer is simply offered their card, phone or the regular Revolut Pay app instead.
The timing is a little awkward, but almost certainly deliberate. Pay with Smile arrives just over a week after Revolut had to tell customers that personal data, reportedly including the verification selfies taken at sign up, had been handed to fraudsters posing as a government agency, as covered in our report on the Revolut data breach that reached Irish customers.
Wallet free, phone free checkout has an obvious appeal. I’ve been here before with a contactless payment ring, and the convenience of tapping a bit of jewellery instead of digging around for a card is real. A face is a different proposition again. You can take a ring off, freeze it in an app, or leave it at home. Your face goes everywhere with you, breach or no breach.
There is no timeline for Ireland, as I’ve said, UK based Revolut customers who want to try Pay with Smile can opt in through the app today.
