Some Syrian refugees can now pay for food just by scanning their eyes

In Jordan, some Syrian refugees can now pay for their groceries with the blink of an eye.

The United Nations World Food Programme, which addresses the food needs of refugee populations, launched a new system at Jordan's King Abdullah Park refugee camp on Tuesday that uses iris scans to confirm the identities of refugees, quickly processing payment for those who receive food assistance. The World Food Programme called it a "milestone" in the evolution of its food assistance program.

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The system, though new to the World Food Programme, is not new to refugees in their relationship with the U.N. Similar technology is already used when refugees register with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), using their unique irises as a sort of fingerprint to store identification information in a database. Read more...

More about Social Good, Refugees, Refugee Crisis, Poverty, and Jordan