Revolut Pilots Facial Recognition Checkout With 0% Processing Fees

Revolut's September 24 announcement puts a new question to the high street: can a face become a useful checkout credential without making shoppers uncomfortable about biometric data? Its Pay with Smile pilot let enrolled Revolut customers pay at selected London coffee shops by looking at a register, while offering merchants 0% processing fees on those particular transactions. The offer is narrow, but it tests two sources of checkout friction at once.

A Small Pilot With a Specific Offer

The trial ran September 24–26 at Kiss the Hippo cafés in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho. Customers opted in through the Revolut app, then used a facial scan at the new Revolut Register to authenticate a purchase. A special-menu coffee cost £1 for people paying this way, with triple RevPoints offered on their transactions. The Independent also reported the London test. Revolut has not announced a broad consumer rollout or provided independent evidence yet that facial checkout is faster than cards at scale.

Register is a hospitality point-of-sale product that brings payments and floor operations together. Revolut's hardware guide describes its payment module. The company says a built-in eSIM backup addresses connectivity failures, though that does not establish that every outage is impossible. Its own survey estimates independent venues spend an average of £875 monthly on payment processing and hardware, a figure presented as company research rather than an industry-wide benchmark.

Zero Fees Apply to One Payment Method

The central commercial distinction is scope. Revolut says the 0% rate applies to Pay with Smile transactions processed through Register, not to every card payment accepted by a merchant. Its separate merchant pricing page and business fee schedule list charges for other payment types. Merchants comparing providers need to separate the pilot's promotional economics from the rest of their transaction mix.

Revolut also offered the first Register terminal at £349.50 plus VAT, half the stated £699 plus VAT list price, until December 31, 2026. That hardware discount is distinct from the zero processing rate. The broader merchant payments range already spans online and in-person acceptance, while Revolut Pay is an existing checkout option. Pay with Smile adds an in-store authentication method rather than replacing those channels.

Biometric Consent Becomes the Main Test

Revolut says enrolled customers are checked against the selfie identity verification completed when they joined, transactions are encrypted within the app, and merchants do not store customers' personal data. Those are company descriptions, not a substitute for independent scrutiny of what data Revolut retains or how long it is kept. The UK Information Commissioner's Office explains that biometric recognition can raise special-category data obligations, and its lawful-processing guidance sets out the questions operators must address. The pilot's opt-in design and a usable alternative at the till will matter to customer trust.

Wider Adoption Remains Unproven

Three cafés and three days are enough to test the checkout experience, not to demonstrate sustained adoption. A larger launch would need evidence that enrolment is straightforward, identification works consistently for diverse customers, and staff can handle declined matches without delaying queues. Merchants would also need a clear answer on who bears the cost of the zero-fee offer and how customers can withdraw their consent. Revolut has not published those results from this limited pilot.

Trust is a recurring challenge for a business expanding beyond banking: our coverage of Revolut's data-handling issues provides context, while its French and Australian banking moves show the scale of its ambitions. For more on identity and platform safeguards, see our analysis of AI provenance and interoperable platforms. Revolut's newsroom has not yet set out a wider deployment timetable for Pay with Smile.