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Blania denied the company is directly exchanging crypto for biometric information, although the company said during its presentation that it had already distributed 50 million of its Ethereum-backed coins worldwide.
“We’ve never exchanged anything for crypto payments,” Blania said. Not everyone who gets an eye scan receives the cryptocurrency, he said, and the company says it does not retain personal information, only using it to verify that someone is human.
Asked by a reporter why the company is focusing so heavily on Latin America, Blania denied that was the case.
“In short there is no focus on Latin America,” Blania said, pointing to uptake in Lisbon, the capital of the one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.
World’s plans have already led to pushback from data regulators all over the globe. In Spain, the company has been ordered to stop operating in all of that country’s territory, citing European data protection law and concerns over how the technology collects and processes biometric data.
The company initially ignored Kenyan authorities’ orders to stop the eye scans, before authorities there dropped their investigation. South Korean data protection authorities previously fined the company $1 million. Blania said the company is working with governments like Taiwan to integrate their services into governments’ national identity systems, although not to replace it.