HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — When refugees at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan check out of the supermarket, they do not pay for groceries with cash or credit card, but instead use a service called “Building Blocks.”
They walk up to an iris scanner at the checkout counter, which confirms their identity on a United Nations database and settles the bill, after it checks that money is available on their account from the World Food Programme, the food assistance branch of the U.N.
Building Blocks operates on the blockchain — a decentralized system of record keeping — and by the end of this year, the program is expected to reach all 500,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan.