A payment method worthy of a science fiction film. Since December 2022, Fabien has been living with a bank card chip under his skin. This 31-year-old man living in Brest decided to have his credit card chip implanted on the back of his hand, in order to be able to pay for his purchases contactless wherever he goes, without needing his credit card or his cell phone.
A real “augmented human experience”, indicates with a touch of humor this computer scientist responsible for cybersecurity in a software publishing company to our colleagues at actu.fr. Like Fabien, around 500 other people in Europe have called on the English company Walletmor to have one of these chips marketed in France for three years placed under their skin.
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Once ordered on the Internet for the sum of 499 euros, the subcutaneous implant must be connected to a bank card before being installed by a professional. “It’s a small incision, I had a stitch,” assures the Brestois, who says he paid around a hundred euros to an implant specialist in La Rochelle for this intervention lasting a few minutes.
The same technology as contactless
Implanted on the back of his left hand between two bones, the device, almost 3 cm long, weighs one gram. It is made up of a microprocessor and a silicon envelope acting as an antenna, all enclosed in a hermetic bio-enclosure. In nine years, when his chip expires, Fabien will have to have it removed.
“There is no impact. I am not putting my life in danger,” he says. “The Walletmor implant does not cause any disease and can be installed in the body without the slightest risk,” assures the British company. She adds that it is the “safest” and “impossible to hack” payment method.
This small chip is based on NFC technology (
Editor's note
, Near Field Communication), the same one that is used for contactless payments. This is why in France, Fabien cannot use it for payments above 50 euros.
If this solution may seem practical, the computer scientist assures that he did it in an artistic approach, "to provoke reflection as is the case with a play or a piece of music", but also to "test" and “get out of your comfort zone”.