Japanese company NEC, which develops facial-recognition systems, has launched one that can identify people even when they are wearing masks.

Axar.az reports that it hones in on parts of the face that are not covered up, such as the eyes, to verify their identity.

Verification takes less than one second, with an accuracy rate of more than 99.9%, NEC says.

The Met Police uses NEC's NeoFace Live Facial Recognition to compare faces in a crowd with those on a watchlist.

Other clients include Lufthansa and Swiss International Airlines.

And NEC is trialing the system for automated payments at a shop in its Tokyo headquarters.