“Face Pass” is a new ticket format introduced at the beginning of this year by HYBE Entertainment. Announced six months earlier, the project was developed in collaboration with the technology company Viva Republica and the ticketing platform Interpark. Thanks to this innovation, our face becomes the concert ticket.
At the venue, fans would have to pass through a special gate that identifies the attendee’s face and grants access to the concert hall without the need to show a paper or electronic ticket. During the check-up process, the attendee’s face will be scanned and compared with the photos uploaded to their profile on the Interpark platform. To create a “Face Pass” profile, users need to upload four photos (front, top, right, and left views of their face) and successfully complete data verification before arriving to the concert.
HYBE has decided to implement “Face Pass” ticketing format at all music events it organizes. The first test of this new technology will take place during a fan meeting with the group TWS on February 14th this year. On a much larger scale, the “Face Pass” will debut 2 weeks later at J-Hope’s (BTS) three-day solo concert at the KSPO Dome in Seoul, which accommodates up to 15,000 people.
This ticket format has not been without controversy, this is why it has been introduced as an optional choice alongside traditional and electronic tickets. Discussions surrounding the “Face Pass” often focus on data security and sharing it with third parties, as it is based on user identification technology used in the popular financial app Toss.”Face Pass” is also seen as an attempt to prevent ticket reselling by Chinese resellers.
HYBE is currently one of the big players in asian music market and has strong influences on american market by ownership of HYBE America (with Scooter Braun as CEO) with plenty of susbsidaries under which famous acts such as Justin Bieber are signed. If ‘Face Pass” passes well in Korea, it might be not too long before it enters international market.
