The Facewatch live facial recognition system used by over 125 retailers operating thousands of stores across the UK will soon begin sending alerts to police, according to a company announcement.
The new Crime Management Platform from Facewatch will instantly call police “when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match on entering a participating store,” the company says. Facewatch CEO Nick Fisher told Security Journal UK that the system delivers alerts within four seconds. That represents a significant improvement since January, when Facewatch reported that response times averaged nine seconds.
Whelton says the system uses two biometric algorithms and human review to deliver 99.98 percent accuracy.
Facewatch plans to start by testing the alert system with its existing retail partners.
Civil liberties groups, however, criticized the new feature.
Liberty Policy and Campaigns Officer Charlie Whelton called Facewatch’s facial recognition alert technology “untested” and “opaque” and argued that it is not subject to adequate governance, The Guardian reports. Whelton notes that it is not illegal for a person to enter a store, even if they have previously been caught shoplifting.
Open Rights Group Pre-crime Programme Manager Sarah Lasoye says the retail biometric system is “entrenching a climate of surveillance across public life” in the city with the most security cameras in the Western World. She argues the system infringes individuals’ privacy rights and criminalizes working-class communities without addressing the root causes of retail crime.
Ada Lovelace Institute UK Public Policy Lead Nuala Polo expressed concern that a planned legal framework for facial recognition use by the police leaves out the private sector
Standards and scale
Facewatch was certified to the ISO/IEC standard for AI system management in June, with an analysis that described its governance as “mature” and “thoughtfully designed.”
The company delivered nearly 300,000 alerts to its retail clients in the first half of 2026, according to the announcement, with each of the last two months representing high-water marks. And it highlights that London’s Metropolitan Police are continuing to highlight the role of “prolific offenders” in the city’s shoplifting problem.
The number of alerts may increase further with the Crime and Policing Act of 2026 adding new legal protections for retail workers and removing a 200-pound (roughly US$267) threshold for shoplifting charges.
Sainsbury’s is planning to expand its deployment from 55 stores to more than 200 by the close of 2026, the retail giant announced just weeks ago.
Article Topics
biometric matching | Facewatch | facial recognition | live facial recognition | real-time biometrics | retail biometrics