FACIAL recognition technology is helping feed hundreds of struggling Britons, letting them swap a face scan for food of their choice instead of making do with donations and castoffs.
With ever more families reliant on food banks to survive runaway inflation in one of the world's richest countries, the option of eating by app is a welcome new choice for many.
"Any food that I like, I can buy. I'm happy they can help us because everything is expensive now," said Kazeiban, a 64-year-old woman from Cyprus and convert to the facial payment system.
She is one of nearly 200 people a month who use the face recognition app since the inner-city London charity, Hackney Foodbank, began trialling the system a year ago. The partnership has now been formalised, with takeup due to jump this year.
Customers can still pick food from the charity's donations — green crates brimming with tinned vegetables, pasta and biscuits — but many prefer to shop by phone, bypassing the stigma that food banks can carry to select groceries of their own choosing.
FaceDonate is a social enterprise that lets people buy groceries at a handful of participating shops by scanning their face on an app installed on their mobile phone.
Founded in 2020, FaceDonate lets charities collect and distribute funds to people in need, while also allowing individuals and businesses to fundraise and track how their donations are spent.
The food bank says it gives users freedom to buy what they need, eases pressure on overwhelmed food banks and lets the charity monitor how money is spent.
With more than 1.4 billion people worldwide set to adopt facial-recognition payment technology by 2025, according to Juniper Research, it is a fast-growing industry — but one fraught with privacy risks, digital rights experts say.
They say using biometric data to unlock help can expose vulnerable groups to data leaks, commercial data exploitation, identity theft and further marginalisation.
Hackney Foodbank chief executive Pat Fitzsimons said the technology meant charities could ensure money was only spent by eligible recipients, reducing fraud and abuse of cash transfers.
Users are given money based on their household size and are barred from spending it on big-ticket items, tobacco or alcohol. Nor can they transfer the funds to anyone else, she said.
FaceDonate said it had transferred over £65,000 to disadvantaged northeast Londoners via face scans since partnering with Hackney Foodbank a year ago.
With Britain's inflation now the highest in western Europe — the annual rate was 10.1 per cent in March — food banks are grappling with record demand amid soaring food prices and energy bills.
The Trussell Trust, which supports a network of 1,300 food bank centres, including Hackney Foodbank, said it had seen a dramatic rise in need, distributing a record three million emergency food parcels in the past year.
"People don't really want to go to a food bank. There's a sense of shame around it," Fitzsimons said. "But with FaceDonate, they can buy exactly what they want. It gives people dignity and agency. We want them to take control of their lives and not to be passive recipients of our service."
People can buy fresh, culturally relevant produce seldom found in food parcels, Fitzsimons said, and the programme relieves pressure on stretched food banks as they need fewer volunteers and spend less time and money on logistics.
But digital rights group Access Now said charities using biometric systems should assess their long-term impact.
It said the reliance on biometrics, including iris and fingerprint scans, could put people at risk — be it from data leaks, identity theft, sale of data or the unfair targeting or exposure of marginalised people.
"Facial recognition is an invasive form of identification and vulnerable people who are in need should not be exchanging their most sensitive information for basic needs," said Access Now's Marwa Fatafta. "You can change your password if it's leaked, but you can't really change your facial features, biometric fingerprints, iris geometries and all of that."
The writer is from the Reuters news agency