In July 2021, in Moscow Metro, the Sfera facial recognition system identified more than 200 people on the wanted list

The facial recognition system in the metro Sfera helped in thesearch for criminals and missing persons. In July, 221 people were found with the help of the system. 35 lost people were found, 12 of them were children who were missing, reports the city’s Department of Transport. The majority of those identified by smart cameras in the subway are wanted criminals. 

This technology is based on the transformation of passengers` faces into unique biometric keys: if the system detects a match with the search database during scanning, it will immediately notify the police. The data of the remaining passengers is protected by encryption and remains 100% anonymous. The data is stored in the information processing center which only law enforcement agencies have access to.

Earlier, Moscow Metro launched testing of the Face Pay systemon Line 4. Initially, only employees of the subway could try out the new payment service, who during this time made more than 1 million successful passes through the turnstiles. By the end of the year, it is planned to scale this service to other lines.

The smart ticketing system continues to develop. Currently, the technologies on the turnstiles are being updated, which will add a number of advantages for passengers, such as paying for travel by phone without unlocking the screen, the possibility of introducing payment by QR code, remote control of the turnstile, and the speed of card reading will also increase, which will allow faster access to the station. To do this, modern passageway zone controllers with an updated design will be installed at all metro stations. 

"Thanks to the development of fare payment services, queues at metro ticket offices have decreased by 3.3 times in 10 years. Technologies are developing at a tremendous speed, and we are massively updating the work of the entire ticketing system of Moscow transport to make it modern and as convenient as possible. The new equipment will increase the speed of passagepassengers through the turnstiles and introduce more ways of paying for travel", — Deputy Mayor for Transport Maxim Liksutov.