Kiwis could soon be able to make purchases using just their face, without the need for a card or phone.Eftpos New Zealand on Wednesday announced the launch of Verifone Victa, a new range of Android-based biometric payment terminals that will allow shoppers to pay with their faces or palms.The new hardware can also act as an age-verification tool, such as for stores that sell alcohol or tobacco, and integrate with retailer loyalty programs to automatically load up customers’ points.“The hardware is ready to support face and palm recognition at the point of sale, enabling cardless payments, seamless loyalty authentication, and age verification without physical ID,” Eftpos New Zealand said.“The infrastructure to support this functionality is not yet available in New Zealand, but while biometric-enabled payments may be the payments of tomorrow, Victa is ready today.”Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young told RNZ that when he first heard about the tech, she was “like, wow”.“I can use my face — how’s my face going to know my bank account?” she said.“But I think if we think a little bit, there’s some biometric payments that already take place. So for example, I often read books on my iPad. I bought a book last night after I’d finished another book and my confirmation of payment was my fingerprint because my card is already loaded into my iPad and it says ‘confirm, press your fingerprint here’ and I press my fingerprint, that’s a biometric payment. So the details are already there.”Eftpos New Zealand said the Victa “will enable age verification, digital identity and secure payments to happen in a single interaction at the terminal, without the need for physical documents” and “reduce the burden on frontline staff and the risk of human error”.Ms Young said the new technology would make the checkout experience faster.“Say you belong to the Farmers loyalty program, and you’re at the counter at the moment and they ask you if you belong to the loyalty programme and you give them your email address or phone number,” she told RNZ.“If your data that’s already on your phone — that includes your email — is hooked in appropriately, you don’t have to publicly give that, or the intention is that you won’t have to publicly give that to someone else in the line … it would pass through seamlessly.”Eftpos New Zealand said proof-of-concept trials had been carried out and the biometric capabilities could be “deployed by retailers who wish to use biometrics, at a time frame that suits them and through their preferred supplier”.“The device can be updated to accept emerging payment methods and extended with third-party apps,” it said.“Merchants can deploy off-the-shelf integrations for loyalty, digital wallets, and on-device marketing campaigns. Businesses can also build purpose-built apps tailored to their needs, taking advantage of Victa’s hardware capabilities including the built-in barcode scanner and cameras to create fully customised checkout experience.”Eftpos New Zealand stressed the Victa was “built to the industry’s highest security standards, with the flexibility of a modern Android platform underneath”.“New capabilities arrive through software, not new hardware,” it said. “The same device that takes a card payment today can run a POS app, scan a loyalty barcode, or verify a customer’s identity tomorrow.”Asked about privacy concerns, Kristy Gregory, Eftpos New Zealand’s head of merchant sales and strategic partners, told the NZ Herald the data “sits with their chosen consumer platform, governed by the same privacy regulations that apply to any other digital service”.She added there was “quite a lot of education and language that needs to be used so that everybody understands what it means”.frank.chung@news.com.au