NEWS
54% OF UK ADULTS BACK FACIAL RECOGNITION IN RETAIL
New national research shows the public is warming to facial recognition in shops, and sends retailers a clear message about how it must be done
New national research shows the public is warming to facial recognition in shops, and sends retailers a clear message about how it must be done
Just over half of UK adults (54%) are open to retailers using facial recognition technology for security purposes. That is the headline finding of new research published on 10 June 2026, carried out by polling company Opinium on behalf of Face Int UK, which surveyed 2,000 UK adults about their attitudes to facial recognition across different parts of everyday life.
For an industry that has often been told the public is firmly against this technology, that number matters. It suggests the conversation has moved on. Most people are no longer asking whether facial recognition should exist in shops. They are asking how it will be used, and whether it will be used responsibly.
How retail compares. Support for facial recognition in retail (54%) still trails the level of support it enjoys in border control (81%), policing (73%) and banking (71%). People are most comfortable where the security benefit is clearest, and retail has some catching up to do.
The research also carried a warning for anyone tempted to read 54% as a green light to deploy facial recognition any way they like. Face Int UK's chief executive Tony Kounnis noted that public support is "highly conditional". People draw clear distinctions between how and where the technology is used, and they expect strong safeguards to be in place wherever it appears.
In plain terms, the public wants three things from any organisation using facial recognition: a clear explanation of why it is being used, what problem it is solving, and how their personal data is being protected. Get those right and support follows. Get them wrong and trust evaporates quickly.
The gap between retail and settings like border control is not really about the technology. It is the same technology, after all. The difference is context and clarity. At a border or a bank, people instinctively understand what the camera is there to do. In a shop, that purpose has historically been less visible, and high-profile stories about mistaken identity have not helped.
That makes the survey less of a verdict and more of a to-do list for retailers: be open about why the technology is in place, be precise about who it is looking for, and be able to show the safeguards that protect everyone else.
These findings reflect exactly how we believe facial recognition should be deployed in retail. The 46% who remain unconvinced are not wrong to ask hard questions, and the answers should be built into the system itself, not added on later.
That is the approach FaiceTech takes. All biometric processing happens in the UK, under UK data protection law. Faces are stored as encrypted mathematical templates that cannot be reversed back into a photograph, raw images are not retained, and data is kept only for as long as it is genuinely needed. The watchlist always belongs to the retailer, with no pooling of shoppers' faces into a shared database. Biometric data is kept separate from everyday systems, with full audit trails and support for the privacy assessments (DPIAs) that UK GDPR expects. In other words: the safeguards the public is asking for are the safeguards a well-designed system already has.
Talking Retail: "Just over half of UK adults back use of facial recognition technology in retail" (10 June 2026)
Scottish Local Retailer: "Just over half of Brits back facial recognition in retail security" (10 June 2026)
Face Int UK: survey commissioner (research conducted by Opinium)