A biometric age assurance system is being trialled in a supermarket chain in Lithuania. Self-checkout terminals from StrongPoint ALS integrating Yoti’s facial age estimation technology are being piloted by Lithuania’s second largest supermarket group Iki.
The four-week pilot will be carried out at an Iki store in Vilnius and is aimed at streamlining the checkout process, with the AI-powered solution targeting a 50 percent reduction in the frequency of employee-assisted age checks.
Iki CEO Nijolė Kvietkauskaitė observes that around 40 percent of all interruptions during self-service checkout are to wait for age verification. Implementation will see shoppers opting to either speed up their age check using their face biometrics, or waiting for a staff member to conduct age verification.
Iki’s self-checkout partner StrongPoint has been partners with Yoti for “several years,” according to Yoti CEO and co-founder Robin Tombs. This latest version of Yoti’s tech performs the liveness and facial age estimation on device, on the self-checkout terminal, and as a result no face or personal data is stored or sent elsewhere. Each face is deleted immediately after the age has been estimated, Tombs says.
StrongPoint ALS boss Julius Stulpinus commented: “Automatic facial recognition technology shortens the age verification process at self-service checkouts from an average of 30 seconds to less than 10 seconds.”
“This solution reduces queues, speeds up the shopping process and allows employees to focus on more meaningful work,” he continued. “This shows how smart technologies can imperceptibly but significantly improve our daily experience, making previously annoying moments completely unnoticeable.”
An informal real-world experiment by The Times is the latest evidence of the higher accuracy of Yoti’s facial age estimation than human estimations.
The pilot is being carried at a self-service checkout in an Iki store on Pilaitės Ave 42. Yoti FAE technology is live or being piloted in countries including Germany, Estonia, Croatia, Bosnia, the UK (but not for alcohol sales) and now Lithuania.
Article Topics
age estimation | biometric liveness detection | biometrics | face biometrics | retail biometrics | Yoti