Toss Facepay pilot reaches 400,000 users, nationwide rollout slated for end of year

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Toss Facepay pilot reaches 400,000 users, nationwide rollout slated for end of year

Published: 02 Sep. 2025, 16:38 Updated: 02 Sep. 2025, 17:34

LIM JEONG-WON
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Toss Technical Product Owner Choi Jun-ho speaks during a press conference at SJ Kunsthalle in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Sept. 2. [TOSS]

Korean fintech company Toss announced Tuesday that its facial recognition payment service, Toss Facepay, has surpassed 400,000 subscribers since its trial launch earlier this year and will be rolled out nationwide by the end of 2025.

The company officially unveiled Facepay and its core technology, revealing a new lineup of dedicated payment terminals at a press conference at SJ Kunsthalle in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Tuesday.

Toss Facepay allows users to register their face and preferred payment method in advance through the Toss app. Payments can then be completed in stores by simply looking at a terminal equipped with the service, eliminating the need to use cash, cards or even a smartphone. Toss says the process takes just one second.

Since its pilot launch in March, Toss Facepay has expanded to 20,000 merchants across Seoul within two months. As of August, the service has over 400,000 registered users, with a monthly reuse rate of about 60 percent.

Toss aims to expand availability to 300,000 stores nationwide by the end of this year and to 1 million stores by 2026. Partnerships are planned across convenience stores, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, fashion and beauty outlets and electronics retailers.

Toss emphasized security as the foundation of the service. The technology incorporates multilayered protections including liveness detection, a facial recognition model resistant to facial changes and capable of distinguishing between similar appearances and a fraud detection system.

A Toss customer uses the company's Toss FacePay service [TOSS]

Toss said the service is the only facial recognition payment system to have undergone a prior adequacy review by the Personal Information Protection Commission. All biometric data is encrypted and managed in a separated network environment, and the company has pledged to compensate users in cases of fraudulent payments.

To support wider adoption, Toss subsidiary Toss Place will oversee the distribution of payment terminals. The company presented three models, the all-in-one “Toss Front,” the add-on “Toss Frontview,” which enables Facepay without replacing existing devices, and the “Toss Frontcam,” which can be mounted on kiosks to enable the service.

Toss is also integrating Facepay with “Apps-in-Toss,” its open app-in-app platform, to create a unified online and offline payment ecosystem.

Oh Kyu-in, executive vice president overseeing Toss’s payments business, speaks during a press conference at SJ. Kunsthalle in Gangnam District, southern Seoul on Sept. 2. [TOSS]

“Toss Facepay is more than a payment method, it is a critical link in transforming the entire offline journey,” said Oh Kyu-in, the executive vice president overseeing Toss’s payments business. “By connecting our terminals, store-level services and Facepay itself, we aim to unify the customer’s experience in offline payments.”

“The greatest strength of Facepay is that multiple security systems work simultaneously within the single second a payment takes,” said Toss Technical Product Owner Choi Jun-ho. “We will continue to enhance the system so that identity and age verification can also be integrated seamlessly into the payment process.”

Toss said its goal is to establish Facepay as a new standard for offline payments in Korea, combining speed, convenience and security.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]