UniverseAI, a Start - Up developing artificial intelligence (AI) biometric identification technology, plans to fully enter the India market next year.
Chu Uimin, CEO of UniverseAI, said on the 26th at Korea Fintech Week 2025 held at the aT Center in Yangjae, Seoul, "We recently signed a contract with a local bank in India and a local payment system company to provide remote facial recognition payment technology." The contract is worth about 20 billion won.
Chu said, "As early as the end of this year, we plan to provide services in India along with terminals," and added, "With its very large population, a single bank in India has 400 million to 600 million users enrolled, so we see strong growth potential."
UniverseAI has already formed a partnership with the Fintech finance app Toss.
The differentiated technology UniverseAI highlights is "1-to-N matching." It can accurately identify a specific person in a large crowd and is considered highly accurate. UniverseAI said its liveness technology (facial identification) recently recorded a recognition rate of 99.85% in a performance evaluation by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA).
The company said that using this technology can overcome the limitations of existing facial recognition technology (1-to-1 matching), which merely confirmed "whether it is the person."
Chu said, "Based on this technology, you can pay instantly with only your face, without a wallet, card, or smartphone," and added, "If you skip turning on the smartphone to press a fingerprint or turning on the camera to scan a payment QR, payment speed is greatly shortened."
AI facial recognition technology is not limited to payment systems. It provides solutions to public institutions and companies that require security, such as video content analysis (VCA) and KYC (know your customer). UniverseAI is helping identify deceased persons and track criminals by supplying VCA technology that combines AI with CCTV to the forensic science division of the Korean National Police Agency and to prisons.
At this event, UniverseAI showcased "UNIVS PAY," a remote payment system, as a core technology. It is a contactless service based on facial recognition that applies liveness technology to verify a real person and anti-spoofing technology to block spoofing attacks, preventing forgery, alteration, or theft.
UniverseAI is also aiming to enter the payment service provider business. Chu said, "We are currently preparing business-to-business (B2B) contracts in Vietnam, Japan, and Dubai," and added, "We are developing a service that allows overseas users visiting Korea to pay with Zero Pay and Seoul Pay."
Having turned a profit in the first half of this year, UniverseAI is targeting more than 20 billion won in revenue next year through its India business. UniverseAI's revenue last year was about 700 million won.