Eurostar introduces facial verification so passengers can skip manual ticket and passport queues

The Eurostar is introducing facial verification at St Pancras. Picture: Reuters

The Eurostar is introducing facial verification at St Pancras. Picture: Reuters

Published Jul 19, 2023

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The Eurostar is introducing facial verification at St Pancras.

The international train service - which goes from London to European destinations like Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam - is offering passengers sitting in Business Premier and Carte Blanche class the chance to skip manual ticket and passport queues with a new facial verification service.

Passengers will need to register their details - like their passport or other identity documents - on the app before they arrive at the station, and would later like to roll out the service, which has been dubbed SmartCheck, to more service users across the network.

Eurostar’s CEO Gwendoline Cazenave told BBC News: "We continue looking for solutions to increase capacity in stations and simplify the passengers' flows.”

Under the new move, luggage and other items with still need to be scanned prior to departure and French border officials will also check passports on the other side.

This comes after it was reported that Eurostar was being forced to leave hundreds of seats unoccupied on services to and from London to avoid long queues sparked by “bottlenecks”, caused by a mixture of Covid-19 and the change in travel rules prompted by Brexit.

Cazenave said: "The thing is now we are not able to run the same transport offer as what we had before in 2019, because of bottlenecks in stations.

"We have a main issue in Eurostar terminals because of the new boarding conditions between the UK and EU, because of the impact of Covid, because of staff in the stations."