Moscow Metro for 1.16 billion rubles buys servers for the introduction of biometrics on all turnstiles

VTB and Rostelecom launched payment for trips in the Moscow metro in person

Main article: TB and Rostelecom launched payment for trips in the Moscow metro in person

Ticket machines with a facial recognition system in the Moscow metro

Main article: Ticket machines with a facial recognition system in the Moscow metro

2025: Moscow Metro buys servers for the introduction of biometrics on all turnstiles for 1.16 billion rubles

On February 24, 2025, it became known that the Moscow Metro intends to purchase Russian servers in the amount of 1.16 billion rubles. The equipment is necessary for the implementation of the project "Payment by person 2.0," which provides for equipping all turnstiles with a biometric passenger identification system.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper, the purchase involves the supply of domestic servers included in the register of industrial equipment allowed for use at critical information infrastructure (CII) facilities. Servers must support the installation of two processors and 24 RAM modules. The biometric payment system belongs to the Moscow government, has protection at the level of bank security and is certified by the FSB and FSTEC. These certificates confirm the reliability and stability of the software and hardware systems.

𝓲

Фото: Moscow transport

The installation of additional servers is expected to improve the accuracy of the biometric system and minimize the likelihood of incorrect facial recognition. In addition, the purchased equipment will provide a multi-platform principle of video stream processing, allowing you to simultaneously use the solutions of several Russian developers of biometric systems. Servers will also improve the performance of the biometric platform as a whole, allowing even under high loads to maintain a standard turnstile response time that should not exceed 1.5 seconds.

As of February 2025, biometric payment is available on more than 1100 turnstiles of the Moscow metro, MCC, MCD, Aeroexpress and river transport. Thanks to the new servers, the system will cover all 4 thousand turnstiles of the Moscow metro by the end of 2025.^[1]

2022: Multiple write-offs by the system

As it became known on January 12, 2022, money is repeatedly debited from users of the system to pay for travel by a person in the Moscow metro. The bank VTB responsible for payment transactions confirmed the problem and promised to return the money.

On the morning of January 12, 2022, during planned work in the VTB Bank authorization systems, some users of the Mosmetro application had incorrect write-offs. Today [January 12] until 20.00 all incorrect write-offs will return. We apologize sincerely and want to hand over small souvenirs to everyone with whom this happened, - indicated in a message on the bank's website.

Users of the system for paying for travel by a person in the Moscow metro repeatedly write off money

Victims are asked to contact by email. According to the Telegram channel "Moscow News," some users of the Face Pay system, which is used to pay for travel to the Moscow metro on a face image, were debited in multiple payments of 23 rubles. VTB did not name the total amount of incorrectly debited funds.

These are not users' first complaints about Face Pay. In January 2022, Igor Ashmanov, a member of the Human Rights Council (HRC), said that his friend was fined 3 thousand rubles for not wearing a mask. The fine allegedly came from a photo taken by Face Pay. The press service of the Moscow metro replied that this is impossible, since the system does not know how to compare a photograph of a face with his personal data. Moreover, she does not have the authority to issue fines.

Encrypted biometric data is stored on secure metro servers in a closed loop. Payment data is stored exclusively on the bank side. The metro strictly complies with the current legislation and uses the data of passengers who connected to Face Pay only for their intended purpose - to pay for travel to the metro using face recognition, the press service of the Moscow metro concluded.

From January 1, 2022, payment for travel on the Troika card and on the bank card increased by 5 and 4 rubles, respectively. The fare on the Face Pay system remained unchanged - 46 rubles.^[2][3]

2021

2 thousand people were detained with the help of facial recognition system in the Moscow metro

Moscow metro Since September 1, 2020 biometric face recognition , the Sphere system has been operating. With its help, the capital's law enforcement officers detained 2032 criminals, which became known on December 29, 2021.

The system uses technology that converts an image of a person's face passing through a turnstile into a unique biometric key-vector. The system is used by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and the FSIN Penitentiary Service, where it is associated with federal and operational search databases that are updated every hour. The city authorities provide law enforcement officers with access to the system.

Also, thanks to the system, police officers said that they caught a person who changed his name, surname, year of birth. The system recognized and helped detain him, he was wanted for many years for a serious crime.^[4]

The police took Muscovites who paid for the passage in the subway face, for stowaways and forced to re-pay the passage

On October 22, 2021, it became known that the police mistook Muscovites who paid for the passage in the metro face, for free riders. Law enforcement officers forced passengers to re-pay the fare.

The police took the residents of Moscow, who paid for the passage in the metro face, for free riders and forced to re-pay the fare

According to the Telegram channel "Caution, news," the incident occurred at the station "Prague." The couple faced problems. The couple passed the turnstiles using a face recognition system - one after another, the doors between them did not close. And it immediately caught the attention of the police. According to the passenger, they did not introduce themselves, behaved boorishly, did not want to listen to anything about FacePay.

Her husband obeyed, then, according to the girl, the police officer said that they were violators and they would be fined 2.5 thousand rubles for unpaid travel. The couple tried to explain that both went through "face pay."

At first, Elena thought that this was some kind of hoax and tried to leave, but at that moment his colleague joined the law enforcement officer, the police demanded that they pay the fare.

Tired of arguing, the couple returned to the turnstiles. The couple, having decided that they had already lost a lot of time and were already late for work, re-paid the fare. After that, they left a complaint against the police, a check began, the publication says.

Subsequently, the capital's Department of Transport reacted to this news and reported its version of what happened:

On October 20, 2021, the girl took the subway on Face Pay, and her husband followed her without payment. The police rightly demanded that the man pay the fare. The girl decided to go the other way and published a video with a statement about unfair treatment by police officers: allegedly, she and her husband passed with the use of biometrics. This girl turned out to be Elena S., an employee of the metro. That morning, on the Prague, she really entered the biometrics station. It is worth noting that metro employees pass at the station only on biometrics: the service is used instead of a personal contactless card, personal for each employee. But her husband, who is not an employee of the mosmetro, "slipped" through the turnstiles after her. This is clearly visible in the image from the cameras. Therefore, the police officer quite rightly demanded that he pay the fare.

^[5]

Muscovites began to hand over biometrics for payment in the metro

On October 15, 2021, at all metro stations in Moscow, travel was paid using the Face Pay facial recognition system. In the first 3 days, 30 thousand people loaded data into this system, which can correspond to more than 1% of passengers. The fact that Muscovites began to actively hand over biometrics to pay for travel in the face was told to Kommersant by the Moscow Metro State Unitary Enterprise.

They said that by mid-October 2021, the system is available at 240 stations (excluding the MCC, MCD and monorail), and in the next two to three years 10-15% of passengers will use Face Pay.

Muscovites began to hand over biometrics for payment in the metro

Visionlabs has become a technological partner of the Face Pay project in the Moscow metro. The company assured that the system recognizes a person even with a partial overlap of the face, for example, with glasses, medical masks and hats.

Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Transport Maxim Liksutov, in a conversation with the newspaper, said that during the implementation of the project, all the requirements of the legislation regarding the storage and processing of personal data are fulfilled.

We don't store facial images. Face Pay users' biometric data is automatically converted to an encrypted biometric key. These keys are generated so that the reverse decryption into the image is impossible, "he says.

The use of computer vision increases the security of the payment process, according to Visionlabs. The biometric identifier cannot be lost or forgotten, which means that the possibility of its use by third parties is excluded. To protect against spoofing attacks, Liveness algorithms help, which solve the problem of verifying a living person and counteract non-program attacks in the form of masks, images or videos on the phone.

The likelihood that the system will confuse people is very low, says Artem Romanov, an expert on security systems at CROC. According to him, the rather long response time of the system is primarily associated with an increase in the reliability of recognition and the exclusion of errors.^[6]

Launch at all Moscow metro stations

A test system for paying for travel by face has been launched at all metro stations in Moscow. This was announced to the press service of the Moscow subway on September 20, 2021.

You can go through the subway on Face Pay through the turnstiles, where there is a round black sticker on the floor. On the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya and Nekrasovskaya lines, the action "Early Time" is also valid for Face Pay testers (travel 23 rubles instead of 46).

To pay for travel using face recognition, it will be enough for a passenger to register in a mobile application, upload a photo of his face and link a bank card or Troika. As a result, when passing through the turnstile, a person looks into the camera, the system finds his picture, compares it with his face and passes it. Money is debited from the card automatically. At any time, you can refuse to participate in testing.

Face Pay test fare payment system launched at all Moscow metro stations

14 lines and 241 subway stations are connected to the Face Pay service. Moscow has become the first city in the world to use facial recognition to pay for travel on this scale. Today, the final stage of testing has begun, according to the results of which we will be ready to launch an innovative service for all metro passengers, "said Maxim Liksutov, head of the Moscow Department of Transport and Road Transport Infrastructure Development.

According to him, by September 2021, the possibility of launching the Face Pay service on the Moscow Central Ring and Moscow Central Diameters, ground transport and ground transport is being worked out. In addition, it is planned to launch a discount system.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said earlier that Face Pay will be available on all metro lines in October 2021 (by September 20, the last 5 lines were connected to the system).

According to Kommersant, citing its sources, the first tests showed that the facial recognition system allows passengers to pass faster than the traditional turnstile with transport cards.^[7]

Finding 221 offenders wanted by 'smart' CCTV system

The Sfera facial recognition system helped find wanted offenders in the Moscow metro, as well as lost people, the Moscow Department of Transport reported on August 13, 2021.

In July 2021, 221 people were found using "smart" video surveillance. Most of them are wanted people caught by smart cameras in the metropolitan subway. So, on July 25, a man who is accused of murder was detained at the Bratislavskaya station with the help of this system.

Another important task of the "Sphere" is the search for the missing. In a month, the system helped find 35 people, of which 12 are children.

Инфографика — пресс-служба Департамента transport Moscow

The technology converts the face of a passenger who has passed through the turnstile into a unique biometric key. If a person is wanted, the system will immediately notify the police. All fixes on the faces of other metro passengers are protected by encryption and remain 100% anonymous. The data is stored in an information processing center, which only law enforcement agencies have access to.

As of August 2021, payment for travel using the FacePay system is being tested in the Moscow metro.^[8]

2020

Liksutov: Payment for travel to the subway for face recognition will be launched in 2021

On December 3, 2020, the timing of the launch of a facial recognition system for paying for travel in the Moscow metro became known. According to the Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Transport Maxim Liksutov, the technology will work in 2021.

That will be for sure next year. Already, on our employees, we are testing this system with two large Russian banks, they already have a face recognition system, "Liksutov said on the air of the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

He clarified that the metro will give only infrastructure related to biometrics, and personal payment data will be stored in banks. In this case, face recognition can work, even if the passenger is wearing a mask. According to Liksutov, cameras that recognize faces are already standing on all turnstiles of the Moscow subway and the Moscow Central Ring (MCC).

Maxim Liksutov said that payment for travel to the subway for face recognition will be launched in 2021

Our system will allow you to recognize the face, and if you are connected to a bank card where there is your biometric data, then you will pass with an open turnstile, - explained the deputy mayor.

Earlier, the deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Transport and Construction, Alexander Starovoitov, opposed the payment of travel through facial recognition, since this can be used to interfere with privacy. In his opinion, while there is no reliable mechanism for protecting personal data, as well as consent to add human biometrics to the transport database, such systems should not be used.

Maxim Liksutov also said that the city authorities are actively negotiating Apple with to add a transport card "" Three to pay for travel in all types of transport in Moscow to the Wallet payment system. According to Liksutov, the American company promised that Troika would be one of the first transport cards in the system in the world.^[9]

Start testing the fare payment system by face recognition at all stations of the Moscow metro

On September 2, 2020, the Moscow Department of Transport announced the test launch of a facial recognition system to pay for travel at all stations of the Moscow metro. One of the test stages will last about a month.

In the near future, the system will actively develop in terms of services for passengers. In particular, entering the FacePay system - with the help of it it will be possible to pay for travel on the face scan. Now we are checking it with our banking partners. We plan to complete one of the stages of testing by October 1 - and we will immediately tell you about the interim results, - the department said in a statement.

The beginning of testing the fare payment system by face recognition in the Moscow metro

In addition, the Moscow authorities expect that video surveillance will help track train congestion. Information will flow to city mobile applications so that passengers can choose the most free cars, which is important in the current epidemiological conditions.

Also, the video surveillance system will help track the congestion of trains. Information will be transmitted to applications so that the passenger can choose the most free cars.

As an example, the Department of Transport cites the Beijing Metro, where cameras identify people who need medical care (for example, fainted). A similar system is planned to be introduced in Moscow in the future.

According to Kommersant, the full launch of the facial recognition system in the metro may be delayed: this follows from the tender documentation for the supply of cameras and servers for the subway.

By the beginning of September 2020, about 5 thousand cameras with face recognition function are working at the subway stations, it takes several seconds to identify one person in the flow of passengers. 105 thousand "streams from cameras" are connected to the city video analytics system (there are more than 175 thousand video cameras in the capital), and law enforcement agencies are engaged in the search for offenders with their help.^[10]

Purchase of CCTV cameras for 1.4 billion rubles

On July 21, 2020, it became known that the Moscow metro will purchase cameras with a face recognition system in the amount of 1.39 billion rubles. The equipment will be installed in 1,500 cars, according to materials on the public procurement website. Read more here.

2019

In the Moscow metro, a face and palm pass system has been launched

On December 18, 2019, it became known about the launch of employee identification in the Moscow Metro (for face and palm recognition) for passage and admission to the premises. This is a pilot project of the Association of Financial Technologies (AFL) and the Bank of Russia. Read more here.

How the facial recognition system works in the Moscow metro

On September 11, 2019, it became known about the launch of a facial recognition system to pay for travel at the Sukharevskaya station of the Moscow metro.

According to TASS, the press service of Sberbank (participates in a pilot project, which is being carried out jointly with VisionLabs), to pay for travel, passengers need to download a mobile application to their phone and go through the registration procedure: take a selfie and enter bank card details.

Facial recognition system for paying for subway fares

After that, it will be enough to enter the zone next to the turnstile marked with a black circle and look at the camera near the validator. The platform recognizes the passenger's face, opens the flaps of the turnstile and writes off the required amount for travel from the card.

To pay for travel, money is debited through acquiring Sberbank. The system will freeze the cost of the trip (42 rubles) on the account to ensure that the linked card is valid.

As reported RIA Novosti with reference to the head of the department transport Moscow Maxim Liskutov, in order to use the service, metro users will need to first enter their biometric data into the system.

According to Liskutov, this is a complex project designed for the long term. Before its full-scale launch, it is necessary to conduct testing during rush hour and at stations with little traffic.

I think that by the end of next year we can talk about some results and pilot implementation on an ongoing basis, "he said.

If the pilot project is successful, then the fare payment system using biometric data will be installed at all stations of the Moscow metro, and in the future on all types of public transport in the capital and in other cities of Russia, clarified in Sberbank. Maxim Liskutov stressed that it will not be possible to introduce technology in the metro as quickly as bank cards and Troika cards. At the Sukharevskaya station in Moscow, ^[11]

"Smart" CCTV cameras on turnstiles

On April 11, 2019, it became known about the appearance of "smart" CCTV cameras on turnstiles in the Moscow metro. A system that recognizes faces has been launched at the Oktyabrskoye Pole station.

The cameras are located on the turnstiles at the level of the adult's face. When reading the ticket, a green signal lights up on the camera. The cameras are installed on turnstiles operating both at the entrance and at the exit.

As a source in the IT market told RBC, the biometric identification technology was developed by VisionLabs. Its head, Alexander Khanin, confirmed this information and noted that by the time of launch, the cameras are intended "only for security." At the same time, Hanin did not explain the development functionality.

Turnstiles of the Moscow metro began to use the face recognition system

The decision on the final configuration and architecture of the project, the procedure for its implementation and the timing of work has not yet been made, - a representative of the Moscow metro told the publication.

He also added that "several of the best Russian IT companies are connected to the pilot."

A RBC source said that an identical turnstile is installed in the headquarters of Sberbank and is designed to test the access system using face recognition.

Setting up a facial recognition system to pay for travel is easy, but it must be connected to the Unified Biometric System (EBS), says Timur Aitov, deputy general director of the Software Product company (develops ticket systems for suburban traffic and metro). By April 11, 2019, the EBS registered an insufficient number of users for the mass use of biometrics in the metro, the expert clarifies.

The publications remind that the possibility of using biometrics when paying for travel in the Moscow metro has been discussed for several years. It is necessary to introduce such systems in public transport carefully in order to make integration comfortable for passengers and not scare them, the deputy director believes. Analytical Credit Rating Agency Alexander Gushchin^[12] 

Notes