Finger Scans Replace Cash at Gonzaga
SPOKANE, Wash.
About 400 students at Gonzaga University are among the first in the nation to use finger scans to pay for meals and other expenses in the campus area.
Sodexho Inc., the company that runs food service operations at Gonzaga, has launched pilot programs at the Spokane, Wash., school and the University of North Texas to see if “biometric finger scans” are workable.
Sodexho spokeswoman Sarah Cody says the company will see how well they work before deciding whether to use the technology at some of the 900 other campuses it serves.
Gonzaga student Scott McCoy uses a finger swipe to pay for things like pancakes at Arny’s, a Gonzaga-area diner.
“It made my parents more comfortable giving me money, because they know what I spend it on,” McCoy says.
The program, known as iMye, operates like a gift or debit card. Students or their families deposit money into an account that can be managed online. When the students swipe their finger over a scanner at campus cafeterias and coffee shops, the scanner reads
the print and performs the transaction.
