UK Uses Facial Recognition System to Pay for Meals in School Canteens

Skolah di Inggris mulai terapkan pengenalan wajah untuk bayar makan di kantin sekolah. (foto: dok. unsplash)

JAKARTA - The facial recognition system that we usually find to unlock our cellphones, will soon play its role in the verification system for school lunch payments.

The Financial Times reports from Engadget, Tuesday, October 19, nine schools in North Ayrshire England will start using payments by scanning students' faces for lunch in the cafeteria.

This technology should be able to help minimize touches during the pandemic, but this new payment system is meant to speed up transaction times. This can be important when the food vendor may have about 25 minutes to serve all the hungry students.

Both the school and the installer of the Cunningham CRB system argue that the facial recognition system will address privacy and security concerns. CRB Cunningham notes that its hardware does not use live facial recognition or actively scan crowds, and is examining encrypted face print templates.

Previously, these nine schools had actually used fingerprint readers, so this is more of a change in biometric technology than a new layer of security.

Parents are worried that if using a conventional PIN there will be various kinds of fraud, therefore implementing a facial recognition system is a safer solution. The North Ayrshire Council added that 97 percent of children or parents had given consent.

However, the new payment system has not escaped criticism, with Big Brother Watch and the UK's Biometrics Commissioner both stating that facial recognition is a cause for concern. Where later the normalization of facial scanning will make students not pay attention to privacy issues.