Russian facial recognition system launched in the metro of Tashkent and Almaty to pay for travel

The Russian company VisionLabs has introduced a face recognition algorithm for paying for travel in the metro systems of Tashkent and Almaty. The technology allows passengers to pass through turnstiles without using physical ticket carriers, debiting funds from linked bank cards through biometric identification. This was reported by the press service of VisionLabs on July 28, 2025.

According to the press service, in the capital Uzbekistan , the person fare payment system was launched in cooperation with the payment system Click and the Automated Payment System Operator. ATTO Biometric payment is available at 25 stations of the Tashkent metro, which is half of the total number of metro stations.

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Фото: Kun.uz

The project management plans to expand the geography of the technology implementation on the remaining metro lines in the coming months. The payment system is integrated with the Click SuperApp mobile app, to which passengers link bank cards to automatically charge the cost of trips.

Statistics on the use of biometric payments demonstrate growing popularity among passengers of the Tashkent metro. Between March and May 2025, the number of passes through turnstiles using facial recognition increased by 187%, indicating a high level of adoption of the new technology by users.

In Almaty, a similar project of biometric fare payment in the metro was implemented in partnership with Halyk Bank. Unlike the phased introduction in Tashkent, in the Kazakh capital, the face payment service immediately became available at all stations of the underground railway.

VisionLabs CEO Dmitry Markov expressed optimistic forecasts regarding the development of biometric payment technologies in the region. He noted the company's expectations about the widespread distribution of face pay in the CIS countries in the next few years, predicting the achievement of a level of popularity comparable to Moscow experience.