The Future?

     From Fast Company:

In South Africa, MasterCard has unveiled one of the world's first debit card-based payment systems for welfare benefits and social security. The new project, released for the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), will disburse government pension, disability, and public assistance payments onto a biometric debit card. Unlike normal debit cards, the South African cards require users to have their fingerprints and voices digitally analyzed by computers. In effect, they're the next generation of the EBT [Electronic Benefits Transfer] cards commonly used for food stamps in the United States.