Toss to expand pay-by-face to 1 mil. stores nationwide by 2026

Toss Pay Leader Oh Kyu-in speaks during a press conference at an art hall in southern Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Toss

Toss is ramping up its push into the offline payments market, aiming to deploy its pay-by-face service in over 1 million stores by next year, the fintech company said Tuesday.

The service, called "Face Pay" by Toss, enables users to make payments at stores simply by looking at a terminal, after registering their facial information and payment method in advance through the Toss app.

Launched as a pilot in March, the service expanded to 20,000 affiliated stores in Seoul within just two months. As of August, the service had over 400,000 registered users, with a monthly reuse rate of around 60 percent.

The company is aiming to expand nationwide, targeting 300,000 affiliated stores by the end of this year and 1 million by 2026. Its partnerships span convenience stores, cafes, restaurants, movie theaters, fashion, beauty and electronics retailers.

"Toss' goal goes beyond simply increasing the number of participating stores. It aims to embed Face Pay into everyday life across all corners of the country," said Toss Pay Leader Oh Kyu-in at a press conference Tuesday. "The mission is simple: to become the most widely used and frequently chosen payment method."

The company says it considers security just as important as the service's convenience.

The system is equipped with multiple layers of security technology, including liveness detection, which verifies whether a real person is present during authentication. The facial recognition model is designed to be robust against changes in appearance, while a fraud detection system monitors for suspicious activity.

The company noted that Face Pay is the only facial recognition payment technology to receive prior validity review and approval from Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission.

A payment terminal for Toss' Face Pay service / Courtesy of Toss

To further strengthen user trust, Toss said it encrypts all data within a network-isolated environment, and operates a proactive compensation system to cover any unauthorized transactions that may occur.

"The biggest strength of Face Pay is that multiple security technologies operate simultaneously within the one second it takes to complete a payment," said Choi Jun-ho, a technical product owner who leads the development of the service at Toss.

Oh said pay-by-face has strong potential for widespread adoption in Korea.

The country has a strong regulatory foundation for personal data protection and biometric authentication, which makes it easier for private companies to align technologies with existing standards.

Additionally, consumers are already accustomed to facial recognition technology, widely used in everyday situations such as entering offices and apartment buildings, and they tend to adopt new technologies quickly.

"Our goal is to convert the entire Toss user base into Face Pay users. By the end of the year, we aim for millions of users to be actively using the service," Oh said.