In St. Petersburg, a pilot project for access to the subway

[tanjimajuha20]

Payment for travel using biometrics in the St. Petersburg subway risks being limited to a pilot project due to unresolved issues with funding and the low level of public trust in the technology.
In 2024, St. Petersburg will launch payment for metro travel using facial recognition, Vladislav Povolotsky, CEO of JSC Center for Biometric Technologies (CBT), announced luxembourg whatsapp number database at the end of last week during the Finopolis forum. According to him, roadmaps for the implementation of such systems should be approved in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Novosibirsk in the near future, while plans have already been approved in Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and Samara.

after scanning the face (Face Pay) has been deployed at one or two stations. "For this purpose, turnstiles need to be equipped with camera units, additional servers need to be allocated, and software needs to be developed," the city subway press service says. In addition, in 2024, it should be possible to travel on the virtual "Podorozhnik" from a phone, and preparations are underway to introduce payment using QR codes via the fast payment system.

But, apparently, we will have to wait a long time for biometric payment to become widespread in the St. Petersburg metro.

Moscow is being built faster
Today, Face Pay in the metro works only in Moscow among Russian cities. Its testing began in the fall of 2019, in October 2021, biometric payment became available at all stations of the capital's metro, and from September 2022 - on the Moscow Central Circle (MCC).

The program's technology partner is the Russian company VisionLabs, which was fully acquired by PJSC MTS in February 2022. VisionLabs CEO Dmitry Markov confirmed to DP that he is considering the possibility of participating in the creation of face payment services in transport in St. Petersburg and other cities in the country. He also said that the studio's technologies are used not only in Russia, but also abroad.

"Our expertise is now in demand in other countries. For example, in September we participated in the launch of a face-based payment project in the Tashkent metro," says Dmitry Markov.

It is also possible that St. Petersburg and other cities will try to use the bioacquiring system developed by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation together with the Central Bank and the National Payment Card System, the testing of which began in October. "DP" contacted the Central Bank of the Russian Federation for clarification, but did not receive a prompt response.

At the same time, it is unlikely that the system will be implemented quickly in St. Petersburg in any case - there is currently no corresponding infrastructure. Moscow's Face Pay uses the existing network of cameras with facial recognition function to identify passengers, which covers the entire capital and each metro station in particular. St. Petersburg's "big brother" is lagging far behind in this regard.

According to the government procurement portal, smart video surveillance cameras were installed at 29 metro stations in St. Petersburg in 2021–2022. The total value of the contracts was 2.2 billion rubles, and, as city officials previously stated, the program is financed from the federal budget. It is easy to calculate that to build a system based on the Moscow model, more than 3 billion rubles will be needed to equip the remaining 43 stations with equipment alone.

[Koeds]

It's great to see St. Petersburg launching a pilot project to improve access to the subway. Such initiatives can significantly enhance urban mobility and make public transportation more convenient for everyone. I recently came across some interesting insights about software development and urban tech innovations here: https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/software-development-companies-montreal/. Implementing smart technology solutions in public transit can really transform the commuter experience.