This Smartphone Lets You Pay for Things by Scanning Your Eyes

It’s said that your eyes are the windows to your soul. And now they’re also the windows to your wallet.

That’s because a new smartphone from Fujitsu and Japanese telecom NTT DoCoMo lets you make mobile payments using your eyes.

As Engadget first noted, the technology is available on the not-so-elegantly named Fujitsu Arrows NX F-04G. A video demonstrating the feature shows how you can scan your eyes to unlock the phone, as well as pay for music and other services.

DoCoMo says the Fujitsu Arrows is the first smartphone in the world to use iris recognition technology, and there’s no real sense of how accurate it will be.

In the demo video, the person using the iris-recognition feature looks at the phone straight on, which means you’ll probably have to angle it a certain way to make it work. There’s also no mention of what would happen if you try using the feature while wearing glasses.

Smartphone makers have pushed eye-tracking technologies before, but none of them actually read your iris like the Fujitsu phone purports to do.

Samsung previously used what it called Smart Scroll technology in its Galaxy S4 smartphone, which was billed as giving users the option to scroll through web pages with their eyes.

But as Mashable’s Samantha Murphy Kelly pointed out, the technology actually tracks your face and moves the page based on wrist movements. Not exactly the same thing as eye tracking.

If Fujitsu’s iris-recognition feature does end up working as well as it seems to, though, we could start to see similar technologies adopted by smartphone makers in the coming years.

Just imagine, a world full of people staring blankly at their phones to pay for the latest Kim Kardashian mobile game. Now that’s a future I’m excited for.

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at@DanielHowley or on Google+.