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World’s Iris-Scan Ambition Lags at 17.5 Million as It Pitches Partnerships to Grow

The Tools for Humanity venture turns orb-captured irises into encrypted IDs for fraud-resistant logins, with enrollment limited to in-person scans.

Overview

  • The company says about 17.5 million people have been scanned, roughly 2% of its stated billion-person goal.
  • To accelerate growth, World is pursuing verification deals, including a Tinder pilot in Japan and partnerships with Stripe, Visa and Razer, with Reddit reported to have held talks.
  • Adoption is constrained by the need to visit a physical Orb to enroll, raising questions about how quickly the service can scale.
  • Regulators in several countries have scrutinized deployments and privacy risks, though experts like Matthew Greene have praised the system’s data-protection architecture.
  • Formerly called Worldcoin, the project has expanded to 21 countries and raised more than $240 million, and it issues WLD tokens to new users.