PayEye

Polish company PayEye offers a FIDO certified biometric POS terminals that verify users through iris recognition to authenticate payments. Users must download the PayEye application to their mobile phone and register their iris-ID at one of the PayEye Partners’ stores. Users must also add funds to the PayEye app which acts as a digital wallet, from which the funds will be deducted automatically when paying at PayEye terminals.

In addition to payment authentication, users also can benefit from promotional campaigns and discounts when using the app.

The PayEye terminal takes a digitally scanned image of the iris and converts it into a special code (PayEye code) to authorize the payment. Accordingly, the terminal does not store actual iris scans and instead stores the encrypted code in its database.

In November 2023, PayEye secured Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification for its “eyePOS 3” payment terminal paving the way for a potential early 2024 launch. This followed the company obtaining the FIDO Biometric Component Certification in January 2023, based on an evaluation of its biometric matching performance and spoof attack detection.

Key customers and partnerships

The first phase of PayEye’s project was based in Wroclaw, Poland, and is available in nearly 130 locations (as of April 2021) including hotels, retail stores, restaurants, clothing stores, bakeries, beauty salons, and clinics among others. Moreover, in June 2021, PayEye partnered with Nowe Horyzonty Cinema, making it the first cinema in the country to accept iris recognition as a method of payment.

PayEye partnered with digital banking infrastructure provider Advapay in January 2021 to create a biometric banking platform enabling customers to pay for goods and maintain payment accounts digitally. Through the partnership, PayEye also plans to expand its platform to authenticate online payments and ATM transactions in the future.

Meanwhile, in June 2024, the company partnered with Mastercard and Empik, a Polish retail chain, to launch Mastercard's "Pay by Your Glance," a biometric checkout technology enabling users to authenticate payments using facial recognition in Poland.

In July 2024, the company entered into a strategic partnership with Worldline, a provider of digital payment solutions, to develop secure cashless payment systems using biometric identification.

Funding and financials

In January 2021, the company received a grant of PLN 460,000 (approximately USD 123,000) from The Polish Agency for Enterprise Development. PayEye aims to use the funds to expand its sales to foreign markets, particularly in Europe, the US, the UAE, and Singapore. Accordingly, in November 2021, PayEye presented its “eyePOS 2.0” in Dubai, and confirmed that it is planning a pilot project in the UAE and to eventually deploy the terminals in Wrocław, Poland.