A school district in the suburbs of Chicago is implementing a biometric payment system for school cafeterias, reports CR80 News. The system will let students of Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 order lunch items by scanning their fingerprints.
It’s a system that is reportedly being embraced by other school districts in the area as a means to improve efficiency in school administration. The technology is being provided by Illinois-based startup PushCoin, which is aiming to reassure parents nervous about the biometric scanning that students’ data will automatically be deleted after 120 days. Moreover, enrollment in the system is optional, with students still able to use their ID cards for purchases.
While this careful approach is likely appreciated by many parents, the success of a PushCoin deployment in the neighboring Geneva District 304 suggests that the program could be a hit: Since its launch in 2014, CR80 News reports, less than 15 percent of the district’s students have opted out of fingerprint scanning, and no privacy or security conflicts have arisen.
While school deployments of biometric payment programs are not entirely commonplace, they do appear to be on the rise, with recent examples in Westerville, Ohio, and the University of Maine. And as biometric fingerprint scanning becomes increasingly mainstream through popular smartphones and other consumer products, more schools could follow suit.
Source: CR80 News
–
July 18, 2016 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us