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If the terminal is slow to accept my credit card at Walmart (which it has been since masks became popular) I look directly into the camera, and it is instantly approved. So it doesn’t really need a full face - I’m guessing eyes and ears are enough.

I use facial ID to unlock my IPhone. Doesn’t work while wearing a mask although no problem with glasses and a ball cap.

Eyes and ears could be enough. It works by measuring the absolute sizes of various features on your face and the relative sizes between various features (the width of your nose in relation to its length, or in relation to the width of your eyes, etc.), and the angles between features... That's a lot of data. And they don't need it all. It's easy to think up about ten or twenty data points they could measure just by looking at your eyes and ears alone. And it's possible no one else on earth has exactly the same twenty(?) measurements.

'Course, it's a little more complicated than that. That's why they'd like to have more than just a picture of your eyes and ears. But eyes and ears could do it, or at least significantly narrow down the probability they've misidentified you.