Product Independently confirmed 2 publishers 2 min read Published Sep 24, 2026, 5:10 AM PDT

Revolut's smile-to-pay till only recognises customers who already sent it a selfie

Revolut's Pay with Smile is running at Kiss the Hippo cafes in London, matching a customer's face at the counter against the ID selfie they uploaded when they opened their account, with no processing fee for the merchant.

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What happened

Revolut has opened its Pay with Smile facial recognition checkout to UK customers at Kiss the Hippo cafes in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho, with the trial running until 26 September.
It runs on Revolut Register, a two-screen hospitality till that Revolut is selling at £349.50 plus VAT for a merchant's first terminal until 31 December 2026, against a £699 plus VAT list price.
Merchants pay 0% processing fees on the transactions and store no personal data, and Revolut says the facial embeddings used to complete a sale are deleted as soon as it is confirmed.
Only existing Revolut customers can use it, because the till checks the face at the counter against the selfie ID check they uploaded when they opened their account.

Why it matters

What it limits constraint The reachable audience is capped by Revolut's own onboarding file, so a barista cannot sign up a walk-in and the pilot can only grow among people who already passed a selfie check.
Who has to decide decision A merchant considering this is making a hardware purchase decision, weighing one terminal against the per-transaction fees it would avoid, and the face scan is not the thing that pays for the till.
Who's exposed exposure A selfie collected to satisfy identity checks becomes a payment credential, protected by deletion and no-sharing commitments that a customer in the queue has no way to verify.
What it sets up precedent Alipay's 2017 Hong Kong deployment shows facial payment can work well and still stay inside one market. The doubt here sits on uptake.

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Confirmed10 publishers

The customer at the front of the queue in Bloomsbury has either already done the paperwork or cannot use this at all. Pay with Smile works only for existing Revolut customers, and the till compares the face in front of it with the selfie ID check that customer submitted at signup ^[8].

So the pilot tests whether people who already gave Revolut a selfie for identity purposes will use it to buy a flat white. Revolut said the system is meant to cut the payment friction that causes lost sales ^[13]. TechRadar, invited to try it in central London, said the scan verified the payment in seconds and was quicker than many contactless payments ^[15].

The merchant's cost is the hardware, since Revolut charges nothing in processing fees on these transactions ^[1]. The discount takes £349.50 off the £699 list price ^[18]. At the £1 launch price on the special Revolut menu, roughly 350 cups cover the discounted terminal before VAT, and fewer at normal coffee prices ^[19].

"By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we'll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points," said Revolut's Alex Codina ^[10]. The data handling is the part a customer has to take on trust. Revolut says all personal data is kept and processed "entirely within our own proprietary application environment" and is not shared ^[6], and that transactions are authenticated with end-to-end encryption managed inside its app ^[9].

Engadget wrote that the system is bound to be controversial given the public's general distrust of facial recognition ^[13]. The prior art points somewhere narrower. Alipay put Smile to Pay into Hong Kong KFCs in 2017 and it never moved outside China ^[11]; Tencent showed a system called Frog Pro in 2019 ^[12].

Before any biometric checkout gets counter space, the identity record has to exist for some other reason, and Revolut's does, because onboarding required it, so enrolment costs nothing for the people it can serve and is impossible for everyone else ^[5]. The saving goes to the merchant, who gets the fee line ^[1], while the customer gets to leave the phone at home ^[9]. When the saving lands on the merchant and the consent decision lands on the customer, uptake depends on the customer having a reason of their own, and for the moment that reason is a £1 coffee ^[16].

The measure of this pilot is repeat use: how many enrolled customers at the three cafes pay this way more than once before 26 September ^[3]. Neither Engadget nor TechRadar reports how many people have signed up ^[17].

What to watch

Whether the trial extends past 26 September or moves beyond the three Kiss the Hippo sites to merchants without a Revolut-branded launch menu.
Whether Revolut publishes enrolment or repeat-use figures for Pay with Smile, or keeps reporting only scan speed.
Whether the 0% processing fee on Pay with Smile transactions survives once the Revolut Register hardware discount expires on 31 December 2026.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption12
Hype gap+30
Incentives72
Confidence55

Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

[1]
Revolut says its Pay with Smile system is the UK's first in-store facial recognition system and has no processing fees for merchants.
Reported Supported Source: Revolut, via EngadgetView cited source
[2]
Pay with Smile is being offered at select Kiss the Hippo coffee locations in London to start with.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[3]
UK Revolut customers can sign up and try Pay with Smile between now and September 26th at Kiss the Hippo cafes in Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[4]
Pay with Smile runs on Revolut Register, the company's new hospitality point-of-sale hardware: a two-screen system designed to combine payments, banking and floor operations for merchants.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[5]
Once customers are enrolled, the system uses biometric authentication data to verify the user's identity against selfies registered when the customer signed up.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[6]
Revolut keeps and processes all personal data "entirely within our own proprietary application environment" and does not share it.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[7]
Facial "embeddings" used to complete transactions are immediately deleted after a sale is confirmed and are not kept in-store by merchants.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[8]
Users have to be existing Revolut customers, as the system verifies the user's identity against the selfie ID checks they added when first signing up to Revolut.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[9]
Pay with Smile offers 0% processing fees for merchants, and transactions are authenticated with end-to-end encryption managed inside the Revolut app, with no personal data stored by merchants.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[10]
"By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we'll replace outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience designed to solve consumer and merchant pain points," said Revolut's Alex Codina in a statement.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[11]
Alipay, a division of Alibaba, introduced a system called Smile to Pay in 2017 at Hong Kong KFCs, though it did not move outside of China.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[12]
Tencent unveiled a facial payment system called "Frog Pro" in 2019.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[13]
Revolut said the new system is designed to reduce payment friction that can cause lost sales, and Engadget wrote that it is bound to be controversial given the public's general distrust of facial recognition technology.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[14]
Revolut Register is available now with a 50% discount at £349.50 + VAT (RRP £699 + VAT) on a merchant's first terminal until 31st December 2026, for both new and existing customers.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[15]
TechRadar was invited to try Pay with Smile at a Kiss the Hippo coffee shop in central London and said a quick facial scan verified the payment in a matter of seconds, quicker than many contactless payments.
Reported Supported Source: TechRadarView cited source
[16]
Guests who paid in-store with a smile could order from a special Revolut menu with speciality coffees at £1.
Reported SupportedView cited source
[17]
Neither Engadget's nor TechRadar's report includes a figure for how many customers have enrolled in Pay with Smile.
Derived Supported
[18]
The introductory price takes £349.50 off Revolut Register's list price, which is half.
Derived Supported
[19]
At the £1 launch price for a speciality coffee, about 350 such sales would cover the discounted price of a first Revolut Register terminal before VAT.
Derived Supported
[20]
TechRadar reported that the move looks to make sure UK small businesses do not lose money from payment terminal issues, whether hardware or software-related.
Reported Insufficient Source: TechRadarView cited source

Sources

2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.

engadget.com
2 articles · September 24, 2026
Revolut Is Piloting Facial Recognition At Store Checkouts In The UK
techradar.com
1 article · September 24, 2026
No wallet? No problem - Revolut's new till will let UK customers pay with a smile | TechRadar

Clarity analysis

How the coverage leans and what the record actually supports. Read the methodology

Perspective Coverage

How much of the coverage speaks to builders, operators and investors. It measures emphasis, not whether the story is right.

Builder

Enrollment costs the user nothing because it already happened. The face at the till is matched against the selfie identity check taken when the Revolut account was opened, so there is no new capture step at the counter and no second consent moment either. Engadget carries the only description of the data path, and that description is Revolut's own: embeddings deleted once the sale confirms, processing inside the company's proprietary environment, nothing left with the merchant. TechRadar's hardware detail stops at two screens and "modular". Neither report gives match accuracy or says what a failed scan does to the queue.

Operator

For a café the offer is concrete: £349.50 plus VAT on a first Revolut Register until 31 December 2026, against a £699 list price, and no processing fee on payments taken by face. TechRadar is the only source in our coverage carrying those numbers. Its framing that the system protects small businesses from terminal failures is harder to accept, because the face scan runs on that same terminal. Engadget's detail is the one a shop owner should want in writing: merchants store none of the biometric data, so accepting the payment does not put a face database behind the counter.

Investor

Zero-fee processing and a half-price terminal are acquisition spending with clocks attached: the customer trial ran to 26 September, the hardware discount to 31 December 2026. Revolut's return has to come from the merchant account and the card volume the register brings with it. An enrollment count, a transaction volume and an installed base for Revolut Register are all missing from both reports, so there is nothing yet to size this against Revolut's UK merchant business.