Biometrics: a ticket to the future that is always with you

How technology became part of the life of metropolitan residents

The emergence of biometrics was predicted by Stanley Kubrick in the late 60s. In his cult film Space Odyssey 2001, the onboard artificial intelligence not only distinguished the members of the ship by voice, but also read their mood. Today biometrics is a part of everyday life for us. Unlocking a phone, giving a password to a bank, getting a passport, and even paying for a metro ride are all done using technology.

Biometrics is the identification of a person by unique physical characteristics: voice, face, fingerprint and others. At the same time, to use such identification or not is determined only by the user himself.

Smartphone owners are already accustomed to the fact that to unlock it is enough to look at the device or put your finger in a certain place. The system reads the data and grants the owner access. The convenience of biometrics was also appreciated by Russian banks, which adopted it to simplify customer identification. One of the largest domestic credit organizations uses face and voice recognition of customers, but only with the consent of the person. Biometrics helps to simplify identification in bank branches; to confirm your identity, you just need to look at the camera. And the voice is useful for recognizing the client when calling the call center. In some stores, special bank terminals have already appeared, where you can make purchases using only your face.

Ten years ago, it became obvious that such an accurate and convenient technology would begin to penetrate our lives everywhere. A fingerprint cannot be forgotten at home, an iris cannot be lost, and facial features cannot be stolen. Therefore, the services we need in everyday life began to be tied to biometrics.

So, in 2021, Moscow Mayor S. Sobyanin announced the launch of biometric fare payment at all metro stations. In October, the service became available to passengers. To use it, you need to register in the Moscow Metro mobile application, take a photo of your face, link a bank card to pay for the fare and Troika. The cost of a biometric trip has not changed for the third year in a row and amounts to 46 rubles. And if you link a bank card of the Mir national payment system to the service, you can additionally reduce the cost of the trip by 10 rubles, which will be returned to your account.

Payment by biometrics works at all metro and MCC stations, as well as at the Northern and Southern railway terminals of Aeroexpress in Sheremetyevo. The testing of the service on land transport continues, this type of payment will also be on regular river routes. Also, payment by biometrics will start working on all directions of Aeroexpress this summer.

Security is also on the level: the photo taken by the passenger during check-in is instantly converted into an encrypted biometric key that cannot be decoded back into a face image. When a passenger passes through the turnstile, the camera also immediately translates the face image into a biometric key, compares it with the keys from the database and “writes off” the fare.

At the same time, personal information is not needed during registration in the service. All personal data and bank card information are processed in accordance with the international protocol on the storage of payment data only in secure bank systems.

The face recognition technology itself is the property of the Moscow government, it has a banking level of protection, interference from outside is excluded. That is, paying for travel using biometrics is as reliable as, for example, linking a bank card in an application to pay for purchases. More than 320 thousand users use completely contactless payment, who have made more than 55 million passes.

It is important that the passenger can delete their biometric data at any time. The authorities of the capital strictly comply with the requirements of the legislation on the use of biometrics. If a passenger decides to delete information about himself from the system, there is a clear algorithm for how to do this.