Lunch With A Swipe Of A Finger

In just under 18 months VeriCool has been successfully installed in just under 50 secondary schools UK wide. The new fingerprint technology allows students to pay for lunch with a touch of their fingertip enabling the cost of their meal to be deducted from prepaid accounts.

Schools who use the VeriCool fingerprint software system say swiping fingers increases speed in lunch lines and helps schools keep a more accurate count of how many students are served meals.

Security and Privacy

The images scanned by the biometrics technology aren't technically fingerprints. Fingerprints used by law enforcement officials identify 40 separate points of a print, but commercial fingerprinting systems, such as VeriCool, typically use just the tip of a finger and identify only 7 to 15 points of a print.

Schools have turned to the technology as part of a growing trend nationwide to get cash out of schools entirely.

Schools also are eager to maximize their students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, which bring aid into schools from their local education authority. High school students who are eligible to receive subsidised lunches often do not enroll because of the stigma of carrying around a free lunch ticket. Paying through fingerprints is entirely private.

Many administrators of cashless catering systems chose a biometrics system because it is the safest, most secure technology available. Fingerprints cannot be lost, stolen, or exchanged between students. With biometrics, schools know for sure which children were served lunch.

Although some parents have been reluctant to enroll their children at first, it is now estimated that 97 percent of eligible students use the VeriCool school attendance system. Only two have opted out entirely because of parental concerns about privacy.

Students think the technology is "cool" and parents appreciate the ease of a cashless system.