Aussies will soon be able to “pay with a smile” at the checkout with the launch of new biometric payment terminals.Verifone, a major supplier of payment terminals to banks and retailers, on Thursday announced the Australian launch of its Victa 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.Verifone head of product Ben Hughes said the terminals would begin rolling out later this year, while the biometric capabilities would take longer to come online as merchants and shoppers began to opt-in.Mr Hughes said there had already been strong interest from a range of sectors.“Even from some kinds of industries we didn’t think necessarily would be going for biometrics,” he told news.com.au.“Obviously anyone thinking of speeding up throughput of payments, groceries or even cafes, but we’re actually getting interest from other markets like GPs — you might be going and checking into a medical centre [using your face], anywhere you need to simplify that friction.”Mr Hughes said Verifone was well aware that some Aussies might be wary of biometric payments due to privacy or surveillance fears — but he predicted that within 10 to 15 years, it would be as ubiquitous as contactless payments.“When contactless started 10-15 years ago, people were sceptical,” he said. “We really do see biometrics as being that next kind of thing. People are obviously using biometrics every day of their lives — on their phones, going through airports. People are getting used to it, but we know it’s going to take time for mass adoption.”He stressed that the technology was strictly “opt-in”.“If you don’t want to use the service, you don’t have to,” he said.In line with Australia’s Privacy Act, the Victa terminals “don’t store any more information than we actually need”.Mr Hughes explained that in fact, the terminals did not even store actual photos.“We essentially take an image and convert it into a vector — it’s essentially a one-way hash, it can’t be reversed [to reproduce the original photo],” he said.“All we’re doing is we’re storing enough information to be able to identify who [the customer is] and the fact that this particular token we’ve generated is matched to a Starbucks app or whatever.”He also said there was no risk of the system being cheated using a picture, as was seen in some age verification tests on platforms like Discord where users were able to bypass the checks with realistic video game characters.“The reason we’ve only come out with the tech now is that the cameras are good enough to be able to have failsafes, liveness detection, all sorts of [security measures] to detect this is a real person,” he said.Biometric profiles will be managed by the service provider, with the merchant offering the biometric option alongside existing payment methods including card, phone, and PIN payments, which remain available at the terminal.Verifone said it expects the platform to support a wide range of merchants, from growing small businesses to large retailers, with use cases across counter service, mobile selling, self-service environments and sectors where identity or age verification matters.The announcement comes after Eftpos New Zealand announced the launch of the Victa last month.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.”frank.chung@news.com.au