A microchip can now be implanted into your body. Walletmor, a British-Polish startup, has disclosed that it was the first to commercialise such technology.
Wojtek Paprota, the company’s founder and CEO, stated that the implant can be used to pay bills everywhere contactless payments are accepted.
The chip in Walletmor is made up of a tiny microchip and an antenna wrapped in a biopolymer — a naturally generated material similar to plastic — and weighs less than a gramme and is roughly the size of a grain of rice.
According to the corporate official, the microchip is secure. He further claimed that it works instantly after insertion and had regulatory approval.
He also stated that it will remain firmly in place. It also does not necessitate the usage of a battery or any other type of power.
According to the company, more than 500 chips have been sold as of now.
Near-field communication, or NFC, is the contactless payment method used by Walletmor in cellphones.
Other payment implants make use of radio-frequency identification (RFID), a technology comparable to contactless debit and credit cards.
While having such a chip inside the human body seems intriguing, a 2021 study performed across the United Kingdom and the European Union indicated that respondents’ top worries were invasiveness and security.
The danger with such chips is that they will become more advanced in the future and be packed with a person’s personal information.
As a result, whether or not this information is secure, and whether or not a person may be tracked.
According to Theodora Lau, an expert, such payment chips implanted in the body are simply an extension of the internet of things—she was referring to a new way of connecting and exchanging data.
She claimed, however, that while many people enjoy the idea since it would make paying for things faster and easier, the benefits must be matched against the risks, especially as integrated processors become more capable of storing our personal data.
According to the study, Nada Kakabadse, professor of policy, governance, and ethics at Reading University’s Henley Business School, is also concerned about the future of powerful embedded processors.
Thousands of people in Sweden have had microchips implanted in their hands in a separate case. The chips are designed to simplify users’ lives by speeding up everyday routines and making access to their homes, offices, and gyms as simple as swiping their hands against digital readers.
Chips can contain emergency contact information, social media profiles, and e-tickets for events and rail travel.
The chips, approximately the size of a grain of rice, are implanted into the skin slightly above each user’s thumb using a syringe similar to those used for vaccinations.
However, implanting chips in humans has privacy and security implications that go far beyond public cameras, facial recognition, location tracking, driving habits, spending histories, and even data ownership, all of which pose significant challenges to the technology’s adoption.
It is worth noting that Neuralink, which was formed in 2016 by billionaire Elon Musk, also faced various security-related problems after it was disclosed that it was creating a chip connected to cables that fan out into the human brain, capable of both monitoring and stimulating brain activity.
Musk has commended the approach, suggesting that it might benefit those suffering from neurological ailments and disorders and predicted that it could enable human-artificial intelligence symbiosis. Many experts, however, predicted that this would be the new target for hackers, as the more complicated and clever computers develop, the more interesting they become to threat actors.
