Bitcoin Enthusiasts Facilitate First Bio-Payment Using a Chip Implant

Bio-payments may soon streamline the development of frictionless transactions.

Pioneering this nascent trend is Patric Lanhed and Juanjo Tara.

The duo created a chip and installed the piece underneath the skin of Lanhed’s hand (also known as body hacking). Using an NFC reader, the team was able to initiate an entry into the Blockchain.

The microchip has the capacity to hold roughly 26 bitcoin keys at 888 bytes of data. In addition to holding bitcoin credentials, the technology can also be applied to virtually activity that requires the transfer of sensitive information.

“We started with bitcoins as a tribute of the revolution on the internet, and we believe in have the ownership of our data,” said Tara, a leading developer of the new payment method.

“Ultimately you will be able to connect you credit card to your implant and pay with that. But this terminal is probably a generic product that can be used in other situations as well. It doesn’t have to be payments, it can be reading medical journals or travel documents.”

The group’s findings went one step further than Martijn Wismeijer’s, founder of the Bitcoin ATM company, tests, which only stored private bitcoin data.

NFC technology is widely present in the IoT space. The wireless feature can be found in the latest smartphone handsets, allowing apps to use the option for contactless payments.

Like Lanhed, most companies apply such capabilities to their products using a tangible clip or tag.

“I found you can use them for lots of different things, even as an alarm snooze button. To switch off my alarm I need to scan either one or two of the implants, so this way it takes a little bit of fiddling so you never oversleep again,” explained Lanhed.