July 19, 2023
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2 min learn
Eurostar passengers can now keep away from UK border checks by having their face scanned
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Some Eurostar passengers passing by means of London’s St. Pancras Worldwide Station will now have the ability to use a facial verification system as a substitute of guide ticket and passport checks.
The brand new expertise, known as SmartCheck, goals to cut back passport and ticket verify strains at St. Pancras and is presently being examined for Enterprise Premier and Carte Blanche clients. Eurostar hopes to roll out the expertise for extra clients if early trials show profitable.
Eligible passengers are directed to make use of an app earlier than touring to scan their journey paperwork and confirm their face and ticket. As soon as on the station, they’ll use particular screens to scan their face earlier than continuing by means of check-in.
Whereas SmartCheck can be used to confirm passports and tickets, baggage will nonetheless be scanned by the safety workers. Border officers at your vacation spot can even proceed to verify passports for now.
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“SmartCheck in St Pancras Worldwide station is an answer for a quicker and seamless check-in expertise,” Eurostar CEO Gwendoline Cazenave mentioned. “By introducing SmartCheck, we turn out to be the primary rail journey operator to undertake biometric face verification. This innovation will improve our buyer departure journey, which is essential to offer Eurostar’s distinctive journey expertise.”
Common Eurostar vacationers will little question embrace the efforts to hurry up the check-in course of at St. Pancras; the station has seen check-in instances improve after French border officers launched further checks post-Brexit.
Whereas Eurostar is the primary rail operator to make the most of facial recognition on this manner, it isn’t the primary time that the expertise has been used inside the journey sector within the U.Ok. London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) started testing facial biometric scanners in 2019, earlier than dropping the mission when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
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Featured picture by CHESNOT/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES
Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed listed below are the creator’s alone, not these of any financial institution, bank card issuer, airline or lodge chain, and haven’t been reviewed, authorised or in any other case endorsed by any of those entities.
