Pokémon card stores in Japan are adding facial recognition to stop people breaking their purchasing rules
Customers will be scanned to make sure they don’t come back more than once per day
The Pokémon Company has announced that it will be adding facial recognition to its trading card stores.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game continues to be a target for scalpers who attempt to buy as many packs as possible so they can resell boxes of cards or individual rare cards at higher prices.
Retailers – including official Pokémon Center stores – have been taking measures for some time to avoid this, from removing the plastic film from sealed booster boxes at the point of purchase (so they can’t be resold as new), to making customers take quizzes to prove they actually know about Pokémon.
Now The Pokémon Company is taking this one step further by introducing facial recognition to its official stores, which it says will help to stop customers breaking its purchasing rules.
Some stores give customers a numbered ticket which determines when they can enter the store. Some of these customers have reportedly been sticking to the purchase limit, but then leaving the store and collecting another numbered ticket, in the hope that staff don’t recognise them and they can return later in the same day for a second helping. The new facial recognition system is designed to stop this.
According to the company, if the system detects that the same person has entered the store two or more times in a single day, or has received more than one entry ticket, an alert appears on the screen and the person is denied entry.
Gotta scan ’em all
“At Pokémon Card Stores, in order to provide a safe and secure shopping environment for all customers, to prevent crime, and to ensure compliance with appropriate entry and purchase rules, we will be using a facial recognition system to verify the identity of customers aged elementary school age and older when they enter the store and receive their numbered tickets,” a notice on the Pokémon Card website reads (via machine translation).
“Children under elementary school age (preschoolers) are not subject to facial recognition and can enter the store with you. However, preschoolers cannot enter the store alone. They must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
“To ensure compliance with our entry rules, staff may approach you individually if they observe you entering the store multiple times.”
It adds that the data collected – the facial image data and ‘number of visits’ for each customer will be strictly stored and managed solely for the purposes intended, and will be deleted after a certain period of time.
“If you do not consent to facial recognition or do not agree to these rules, we regret to inform you that we will be unable to allow you to enter the store or provide you with an entry ticket,” it says.
