PopID

PopID is a provider of facial recognition-based access control (PopEntry) and payment (PopPay) solutions. The company is a subsidiary of Cali Group, an investment holding company with ownership stakes in several food industry tech startups.

Following the rollout of PopEntry, the company plans to deploy PopPay throughout local businesses after trialing the technology in sister company CaliBurger (a premium burger chain), which claims to have substantially reduced both order time and wait time. The payment method enables customers to view their past orders and access payment methods using facial recognition and can be used in drive-thrus, in-venue kiosks, display screens at the counter, and through hand-held android devices. As of September 2021, PopPay was used by more than 100 restaurants and retailers around college campuses throughout Southern California with around 70,000 registered users performing more than four million face authentications.

In September 2021, the company announced raising USD 10 million in Series B funding from parent company Cali Group, The Wasserstrom Company, and Japan Computer Vision, a subsidiary of SoftBank Corp, bringing the company's total funding to USD 15 million. The company earmarked the funds for rolling out its services to college campuses across the US by March 2023. In November 2021, the company also partnered with investor Japan Computer vision to launch PopPay at several Wendy's First Kitchen (Japanese fast food restaurant chain) locations. In March 2022, PopID partnered with ASM Global to employ PopPay at the Pechanga Stadium in San Diego, California to grant access for payments with a selfie of the user. With 300+ global entertainment, sports, and exhibition venues globally, ASM Global plans to expand the use of PopPay to other ASM arenas in future. In May 2022, the company also partnered with Bahamian digital wallet SunCash to enable users to make payments using Sand Dollars (Bahamas’ Central Bank Digital Currency [CBDC]) through PopPay terminals.