In Sweden, there is a real boom in the implantation of microchips into the body.
At the moment, more than 4 thousand residents have already implanted RFID chips under the skin of their hands, with the help of which they can enter the house without keys, make purchases, go without paper tickets to concerts and gain access to social networks.
While in other countries all this is still commonplace only in futuristic films, in Sweden the future has already arrived.
The procedure costs only 140 euros, and the chip itself is the size of a grain of rice. For popularization and convenience, some companies even offer their employees free chipping.
The leader in chipping in Sweden is BioHax International. Five years ago, its head Jovan Österlund was still engaged in professional piercing, but then the idea of chipping captured his imagination.
The chip technology is based on Near Field Communication (NFC) wireless technology, which allows information to be transmitted over short distances (about 10 cm). It was created back in 2004, but only in recent years has it begun to spread widely.
In June 2017, Swedish railways SJ Rail reported that around 100 people paid for the ride with chips in hand. In 2018, these numbers have likely doubled or tripled.
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According to Sylvia Warszega, everything is very convenient with the chip and it "solves her problems." With the help of a microchip, you can now even log into the LinkedIn social network.
Chipping, as always, has enough critics. According to them, this poses a danger to personal data that may fall into the wrong hands. Also, there are still enough failures. For example, when the train payment system was just introduced, the controller could sometimes see the social profile of this person on LinkedIn and all of his data.
The chip is inserted under the skin of the hand very easily with a syringe just below the thumb.
Several companies in Sweden have already introduced technology whereby a chip can be used to pay for lunch at a work cafe and enter and exit buildings. This is how the Epicenter company became known, which in April 2018 officially offered all its employees to supply RFID chips for free.
Ulrika Kelsing, 28, is delighted to have a microchip in her hand. Previously, she was constantly fiddling with keys, and sometimes she needed an identification card, but now she just needs to bring her palm to the panel.
Ulrika works at the media agency Mindshare and she is confident that she should not be afraid of hackers and that this system is completely secure.