These consumer-facing efforts solve longstanding problems
The two standout innovations topping the Consumer Products and Services category of 2026 World Changing Ideas directly address issues dealt with every day by a wide range of consumers. One takes aim at the unsustainable methods of producing commercial cooking oil, while the other seeks to ban deceptive bad actors from online dating apps. Winners Face Check, Match Group. They may be your new crush, but are they even real? It’s hard to know whether a dating app user is a genuine human being or a scammer using AI-generated or stolen photos. In 2025, Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, launched Face Check, a system that requires all users to take a quick video selfie to check that their real face corresponds with the one on their profile pictures. Match retains the biometric “face map” so those banned users don’t try to sign up to another of Match’s dating apps. Now that it’s mandatory in the U.S., U.K., India, Colombia, and various other markets, the company says Face Check has reduced exposures to bad actors’ profiles by 60%, with 80% of scam profiles getting removed before being reported by a user. Match views the innovation as a trust-restoring blueprint for digital apps of all kinds, from messaging apps to marketplaces, where phone or email verification often fails. Organic Fera Fruit Oil, Zero Acre FarmsWhile the health downsides of seed oils are often exaggerated, it’s true that their production is typically unsustainable—especially at scale, when just the U.S. food service industry alone uses 3 million metric tons of cooking oil per year. Fera Fruit Oil is a more environmentally friendly option that launched in March 2025. Partnering with organic, regenerative farms in Colombia, Fera uses the fleshy fruit of the hybrid oleifera x guineensis palm tree, allowing the company to leave trees rooted in the ground for their 25-year lifetime, unlike the process for much of the mass-produced palm oil. It uses about 0.3 acres of land per ton of oil, versus 4.6 for canola