Pay-with-a-Selfie, a human-centred digital payment system

I thought this was a spoof / 'The Onion' style story, then I saw this.

> The Pay-with-a-Group-Selfie (PGS) project, funded by the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, has developed a micro-payment system that supports everyday small transactions...

We (Ticketleap) did something similar in ticketing. https://www.ticketleap.com/info/selfie-ticket

From the paper:

> [Pay with a Group Selfie (PGS)] is a mobile payment technique that leverages on face-to-face exchanges where pictures taken with mobile phones are used to embed all information (the parties’ identities, the exchanged goods/services, and the price) of a business transaction. The system relies on Visual Cryptography (VC) to generate two untamperable shares of the selfie showing the transaction. The buyer and the seller hold a share each, and the transaction can be checked simply by stacking the shares.

I have a hard time considering something "human-centred" when the very concept seems completely inaccessible to people with visual or motor impairments.

Possibly one of the worse funding decisions by bill gates' foundation.

Even in poor, rural communities in India, more feasible payment methods backed by the government (BHIM) seems more practical than this paper

Ah we built something similar at a hackathon a couple of years ago as a joke. Was briefly the owner of paybyselfie.com.

"The gesture - taking a selfie - has become part of the lifestyle of mobile phone users worldwide, including non-technology-savvy ones." Since when has taking a picture with a mobile phone been relegated only to "technology-savvy" people?