April 22 2022: On October 15  2021, the Moscow Metro  launched what  was claimed as the world’s first fare payment system based on facial recognition technology.The cashless, cardless and phone-less system, called “Face Pay,”  was  fitted at special turnstiles across the Russian capital’s more than 240 metro stations.
To enter the metro, passengers  did not need  to use a card or a smartphone — they  just looked at the camera on the turnstile.. which was good at a time when passengers were worried about corona virus and contact dangers.
According to the Moscow Department of Transport, since then, more than 19 million rides have been made in the Moscow Metro with the use of the Face Pay (the fare payment system based on facial recognition) since the service was launched. The service is operating in cooperation with VTB and VisionLabs, one of leading digital enterprises in Russia.
VisionLabs helps to create passenger services on the basis of computer vision technology. The payment data is stored only on the side of VTB Bank and is protected according to the security protocol generally accepted in the global payment card industry. The system itself is under the full control of the Government of Moscow, - declared Maksim Liksutov, the Deputy Mayor for Transport.
Face Pay service was launched at Kutuzovskaya station of the Moscow Central Circle (MCC) on March 16. By the end of the year, it will be available at all stations of the MCC. The service will also soon be tested on the surface transport.
The Moscow Metro is one of the largest metro systems in the world and one of the world leaders in the number of contactless payment methods. The ticketing system of Moscow has been recognized internationally several times.
Moscow Times reported at  the time of the launch in October 2021 that activists have expressed fears that authorities will use facial recognition cameras as a surveillance tool. Authorities in the Russian capital have already widely deployed facial recognition technology across the capital, with a network of almost 200,000 surveillance cameras used to identify criminal suspects. The Moscow mayor’s office denied that there was any possibility of misusing the data.