Greater Egg Harbor High School District to install biometric payment system for students

The Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District in New Jersey is set to install a biometric fingerprint payment system for students to purchase lunch.

The system, called Meal Pay Plus, will be installed by Horizon and will be paid for by the district’s food service program.

“It eliminates the use of cash in the building, making it less of a liability,” Greater Egg Harbor Regional School District Board of Education Secretary and School Business Administrator Charles Muller told the board in a regular meeting, as reported in Galloway Patch.

“Right now, if students forget their ID cards, they have to get a temporary card and present that. It’s time consuming,” Muller said. “This way, a student can just use their finger.”

According to board officials, this system is already in use in nearby townships. Reported in BiometricUpdate.com, a similar system has been set up at the Treviglas Community College in England.

According to an Educatering Magazine feature from 2012, cashless systems such as the the Meal Pay Plus system are also beneficial in terms of profit and planning. As students making use of this system will not be able to squander their money and spend it elsewhere, cafeterias will be operating more profitably. In addition, they will also have a much richer dataset from which to plan popular meals and understand consumption patterns.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  cashless payment  |  financial services  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  privacy  |  workforce management