Designed to recognize products, not people
No facial recognition. None. By design.
A Smart Store from SMV identifies the item a resident picks up so it can charge the right price. It does not identify the person. There is no camera analyzing people. This page explains exactly what that means and how we can prove it to your board.
No facial recognition. No facial detection. No age or gender estimation. There is no camera analyzing people. Our computer vision is trained on products, not people. It recognizes which item was taken so the Smart Store can charge the correct price. It never sees, scans, profiles, or stores anything about the person who took it. We are not promising to handle your data carefully. The ability to recognize a person was never built in.
Exactly what it does
What the Smart Store does, and does not, do.
It does
- Recognize products on the shelf so it can charge for what was taken.
- Process the payment for that transaction.
- Send a receipt for the items purchased.
It does not
- Run facial recognition or facial detection.
- Estimate age, gender, mood, or any demographic.
- Store images of residents.
- Build or keep biometric templates of anyone.
- Track or profile an individual across visits.
The only thing the Smart Store knows about a transaction is the item and the payment. That is the entire data footprint.
How data is handled
Kept simple on purpose.
- No resident images. We do not capture or retain photos of the people who use the Smart Store.
- No biometric templates. We do not create or store face, fingerprint, or any other biometric data.
- Only the transaction. What is recorded is the product taken and the payment for it.
- Payments handled by the processor. Card payments are processed through the payment system; we do not store full card numbers.
If your board wants this in writing, we provide a plain-language data-handling summary and a short privacy clause in the agreement.
Where this sits in Canadian privacy law
Designed to the Canadian standard, by name.
PIPEDA
As a private-sector operator, SMV is governed by Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, the operative federal privacy law.
OPC biometrics guidance
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has set out how biometric information should be treated. The simplest way to meet that bar is not to collect it at all, which is exactly our design.
Privacy by Design
The principle, rooted in Ontario, of building privacy in from the start. A Smart Store that cannot analyze a person is Privacy by Design in its plainest form.
Due diligence matters
The campus episode, and why our design is different.
You may have seen the news about self-serve machines on a Canadian university campus that were quietly running facial-detection and demographic-profiling technology on the people in front of them. The regulator found that even brief, anonymous age and gender analysis of a face is the collection of personal information and requires consent. The "it is just an anonymous sensor" defense was rejected.
We point this out for one reason: that is precisely the technology we deliberately do not use. We did not build our defense around "we do not identify you." We removed the capability to analyze people at all. The lesson is that buildings should do real due diligence on what their unattended retail is actually doing. We make that easy.
For your board
A Privacy Impact Assessment, on request.
If your board or property manager wants to satisfy a privacy review, we provide a Privacy Impact Assessment and a data-handling summary you can put on file. It documents what the Smart Store collects (the transaction), what it does not collect (anything about the person), and how that maps to PIPEDA and the OPC biometrics guidance. This directly answers the due-diligence question a careful board should be asking of any vendor.
Common questions
Privacy questions we get.
- Do Smart Stores have cameras that watch people?
- No. A Smart Store uses computer vision trained on products, not people. It recognizes which item was taken so it can charge the right price. There is no camera analyzing people, no facial detection, and no resident images stored.
- Do Smart Stores use facial recognition?
- No. No facial recognition, no facial detection, and no age or gender estimation. We did not build our system to identify people and then promise not to look. We removed the capability to analyze people at all.
- What data does a Smart Store collect?
- Only the transaction: the product taken and the payment for it, the same basic record any store keeps when you buy something. Card payments are handled by the payment processor, and we do not store full card numbers. No biometric data, no resident images, no profiles across visits.
- Does this comply with Canadian privacy law?
- Yes. SMV is governed by PIPEDA, Canada's federal private-sector privacy law. By not collecting biometric information at all, a Smart Store meets the bar set by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's biometrics guidance, and reflects Privacy by Design. We provide a Privacy Impact Assessment and a data-handling summary for boards on request.
In short
It charges you for what you take, and never looks at who you are.
Product recognition, not facial recognition, with the privacy paperwork to back it up.
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