Revolut pilots facial recognition checkout with 0% merchant fees
A three-day trial at three London cafés put a bank-owned till, biometric checkout and free processing in one box. Terminal and till resellers now have a licensed bank competing on their patch
- The pilot ran from 24 to 26 September at three Kiss the Hippo cafés in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho.
- Revolut says Pay with Smile transactions carry 0% processing fees for the merchant.
- Revolut Register lists at £699 plus VAT, with a first terminal at £349.50 plus VAT until 31 December 2026.
- Revolut’s standard terminal rates start at 0.8% plus £0.02 a transaction.
Revolut waives fees only where it controls both sides of the payment, which looks designed to cap the cost of the offer while giving merchants a reason to install its hardware. Leaders with a large consumer base can copy the pattern: subsidize the transactions they own and earn on the terminal and the card traffic that follows. Rivals selling tills are likely to compete on resilience and bundled settlement, since the fee waiver reaches only some of a venue’s customers.
“With over half of Brits reporting delays or failures due to merchants dropping internet signals, checkout friction is driving customers out the door.”Alex Codina, general manager of merchant payments, Revolut Business
Revolut ran what it calls the UK’s first in-store facial recognition checkout at three Kiss the Hippo cafés in London from 24 to 26 September, charging the merchant 0% processing fees on every payment made by face. The bank announced the pilot on 24 September alongside Revolut Register, a two-screen point-of-sale (POS) device built for hospitality.
Pay with Smile works only for Revolut customers who opt in through the app. At the till, Revolut checks the customer’s face against the selfie it took for identity verification when the account was opened, and Revolut processes the payment itself, with no card or phone presented. Revolut says the encryption sits inside its app and that merchants never hold the personal data.
The hardware is the longer game
Revolut says Register’s built-in eSIM keeps a venue trading when its broadband drops, and it lists at £699 plus VAT, with a merchant’s first terminal at half price until 31 December 2026. Revolut’s existing card-machine rates start at 0.8% plus £0.02 a transaction, according to its point-of-sale page, and its POS software comes free with a Revolut Business account. The zero-fee offer applies only to Pay with Smile transactions, not to card payments.
Revolut justifies the launch with its own research, which it says shows independent venues spending an average of £875 a month on processing and infrastructure and losing £2,495 a year to terminal outages. The release gives no sample size and does not say who ran the fieldwork. Electronic Payments International, which reported the pilot on 25 September, described Register as a device aimed at hospitality businesses.
Sources
- Revolut, “Revolut shakes up the high street with first pilot of facial recognition payments and 0% processing fees”, press release, 24 September 2026. https://www.revolut.com/news/revolut_shakes_up_the_high_street_with_first_facial_recognition_payments_and_0_processing_fees/
- Electronic Payments International, “Revolut starts UK pilot of in-store facial recognition checkout”, 25 September 2026. https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/revolut-starts-uk-pilot-of-in-store-facial-recognition-checkout/
- Revolut Business, “Point of Sale”, product page, accessed 28 September 2026. https://www.revolut.com/business/point-of-sale/
