Want lunch? Palm it over

Fed up with using swipe cards and PINs for their students’ lunch payments, a school board district in Clearwater, Fla. recently partnered with microelectronic company Fujitsu to use palm vein readers for nearly half of their 102,000 students. Pinellas County School Board District spent $120,000 to implement 300 machines that rely on vascular biometrics to read, encrypt and store images of students’ hands. Unlike other devices, the palm vein readers scan students’ palm patterns via near-infrared light and don’t require contact with the children’s hands. While enrolling in the palm scan program is voluntary, the school has seen 46,000 students sign on so far, according to a report from ThirdFactor.

(Image via nate‘s Flickr photostream)