Implanting microchips into a human body is not a futuristic concept anymore but a reality. Recently, a British-Polish company, Walletmor, has revealed that it was the first firm to make such tech available commercially.
Wojtek Paprota, who is the founder and chief executive of the company, said that the implant can be used to pay bills wherever contactless payments are accepted.
According to a BBC report, Walletmor’s chip is made up of a tiny microchip and an antenna coated in a biopolymer — a naturally derived material comparable to plastic — and weighs less than a gram and is around the size of a grain of rice.
As per the company executive, the microchip is safe. He also stated that it functions immediately after implantation and has received regulatory approval.
Additionally, he said that it will remain firmly in place. It also doesn’t require the use of a battery or any other form of power. As of now, more than 500 chips have been sold, said the company.
Near-field communication, or NFC, is the contactless payment technique in smartphones that Walletmor employs.
Other payment implants use radio-frequency identification (RFID), a technology that is similar to that used in contactless debit and credit cards.
However, while having such a chip inside the human body may sound interesting but a 2021 survey, conducted across the United Kingdon and European Union, has revealed that respondents’ top concerns remained invasiveness and security.
The concern with such chips is whether they will grow ever more advanced in the future and be filled with a person’s private data. And, as a result, whether or not this information is secure, and whether a person may be followed.
As reported, an expert, Theodora Lau, told BBC that such payment chips placed in the body are simply an extension of the internet of things—she was referring to a new manner of connecting and exchanging data.
However, she claimed that although many people like the notion since it would make paying for products faster and easier, the benefits must be balanced against the risks—especially as integrated processors become increasingly capable of storing our personal data.
As per the report, professor of policy, governance, and ethics at Reading University’s Henley Business School, Nada Kakabadse, is similarly wary of the future of advanced embedded processors.
In a separate case, thousands of people in Sweden have had microchips implanted in their hands. The chips are intended to make users’ life easier by speeding up their daily routines and making access to their homes, offices, and gyms as simple as swiping their hands against digital readers. Emergency contact information, social media profiles, and e-tickets for events and rail travels can all be stored on chips.
The chips, which are about the size of a grain of rice, are implanted into the skin slightly above each user’s thumb with a syringe similar to that used for vaccinations.
But again, implanting chips in humans has privacy and security ramifications that extend far beyond public cameras, facial recognition, location tracking, driving habits, spending histories, and even data ownership, all of which represent significant barriers to the technology’s acceptance.
It is worth noting that Neuralink, founded by billionaire Elon Musk in 2016, also faced several security-related questions after it was revealed that it has been developing a chip connected to wires which fan out into the human brain, capable of both recording brain activity and stimulating it.
Musk has lauded the technique, claiming that it might help people with neurological illnesses and disorders, as well as predicting that it could enable human-artificial intelligence symbiosis. But many experts claimed that this would be the new target for hackers, because the more complex and intelligent computers become, the more appealing they become to threat actors.
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