Toss bets on your face as future of payment

Fintech giant eyes 1 million stores by 2026 after strong pilot uptake

A Toss mobile terminal demonstrates a payment made via Facepay facial recognition. (Toss)

Ever tried to juggle a coffee cup or a shopping bag while fumbling for your phone or wallet at the cashier? Toss says that hassle is about to disappear.

The fintech giant on Tuesday announced plans to roll out Facepay nationwide in 2026, targeting 1 million stores, with an initial goal of reaching 300,000 outlets by end-2025.

The move follows a March trial in the capital area that saw 20,000 Seoul outlets adopt the technology within two months, attracting 400,000 users by August. More than 100,000 payments have been processed, with 60 percent of users returning for multiple transactions.

Facepay lets shoppers complete purchases by simply looking into a camera, a convenience Toss says is matched by strong security safeguards.

“The biggest strength of Facepay is that various layers of security technology are activated within the snap of a second,” said Choi Jun-ho, the product owner leading development, during a press conference Tuesday. Toss says the system uses a combination of liveness checks, facial recognition and fraud detection to verify each payment.

The firm has also revamped its hardware lineup under subsidiary Toss Place, adding new devices — Toss Frontview and Toss Frontcam — to support in-store adoption.

Facepay underscores Toss’ shift offline. Viva Republica, the app's operator, launched Toss in 2015 as a money-transfer app, before turning it into a super-app spanning banking, brokerage, insurance and payments. Now, with Facepay, the company is linking its online platform to physical stores through “App-in-Toss,” aiming to create a seamless, integrated payments experience.

According to the Bank of Korea, the share of mobile device payments at offline shops rose from 44 percent in 2020 to 52 percent in 2024, while physical card payments dropped from 56 percent to below 50 percent, meaning more people now pay via mobile than with physical cards.

Toss hopes to take this shift a step further with Facepay, popularizing face recognition as a new paradigm. “Those who have used Facepay say (it feels like) the process of payment itself has been removed,” said Oh Kyu-in, head of Toss Pay. “It’s not simply about introducing another way to pay — it’s about redesigning daily life around payments."