Chaayos Face Privacy Storm Due to Facial Recognition System

Chaayos, a popular tea store chain used to ask customers their phone numbers before they make a payment. They say your phone number is tied into a loyalty program. Some people find value in that and have no worries about sharing their numbers. Now Chaayos wants to simplify the payment process and asking customers to check-in using facial recognition.

MediaNama reported about a payment counter at one of its Delhi outlets, which had a tablet where you have to check-in by standing in front of its camera. Looks like now it seems you need to scan your face so that the system recognises you and then you can place your order.

Few things are of concern here.

Facial recognition is a form of biometric authentication that is still used carefully. One of the significant arguments for that is privacy concerns. But it looks like Chaayos wants to make it more mainstream at its outlets.

Initially, customers do not have an opt-out option, and they are bound to go through the process before ordering. Another thing is the terms and conditions of this process reportedly mentions that "Customer should not expect that customer's personal information should always remain private." Really Chaayos?

But Chaayos, it seems, is making no effort to come out clean regarding this procedure.

As per Medianama editor Nikhil Pahwa, there are no terms and conditions on display; there is no opt-out option, there is no clarity on how Chaayos processes this data, there is no clarity on which other data points are being linked to your facial data and much more.

People went on to Twitter to express their concern on the issue.

Below is the statement issued by Chaayos:

Since its inception, Sunshine Teahouse Pvt Ltd ("Chaayos") has strived to leverage technology to deliver excellent customer experience. Towards this endeavour, we have recently launched a facial recognition feature at our Point of Sale as an option to eliminate the hassles of OTPs and reduce the overall customer purchase time. The feature is currently in the beta phase at select cafes and will be officially rolled out post thorough testing.

At Chaayos, we are extremely conscious about our customer's data security and privacy and are committed to protecting it. Data from the facial recognition feature is encrypted and cannot be accessed by any party, including Chaayos itself except for logging-in to our customers. There is no third party sharing of the data for any purpose. And Chaayos does not use or process this information for any other purpose. Moreover, customers have the right to not opt-in for facial recognition feature and instead use their phone number to enjoy the benefits of our loyalty program. Even providing phone number is not mandatory to enjoy a cup of chai or other products at Chaayos.

We also provide our customers with a permanent "Opt-out" feature on our website, where-in they can choose to permanently delete their pictures captured by our systems at any point in time. Our café staff is also well trained to help customers register or opt-out of the feature.