Sweden's Microchip Implants: How They Work and What They Can't Do

First published November 11, 2018.

Yes, it really happened: by the autumn of 2018 more than 4,000 people in Sweden had a microchip about the size of a grain of rice injected into the hand, just above the thumb. They used it to open office and gym doors, to store contact details, and, on Sweden's largest train operator, as an electronic ticket. What the chips could not do was "access literally everything," track their owners by GPS or work anywhere without a matching reader. Here is what the implants are, how they were used in Sweden, and where the real privacy questions lie.

What happened in Sweden in 2018

The figure of "over 4,000" comes from reporting in October 2018, including a widely shared piece by NPR's correspondent in Stockholm. Most of the implants were supplied by Biohax International, a company started around 2013 by Jowan Österlund, who had previously worked as a professional body piercer. At the time he said demand was outrunning his ability to perform the procedures, and he was preparing training material so that Swedish doctors and nurses could take on some of the work.

The procedure itself is quick. A syringe much like the one used for a vaccination places the glass-coated chip under the skin of the hand. NPR put the price at roughly 180 US dollars. There is no surgery in the usual sense and no stitches, although, as with any piercing or injection, the site has to heal.

The trend was not invented by one company. Swedish biohackers had been holding "implant parties" since about 2015, and the Stockholm innovation hub Epicenter offered implants to members and staff so they could open security doors, use the photocopier and pay in the café. The Biohax wave of 2017 and 2018 simply took the idea from a small hobbyist scene to a few thousand ordinary office workers.

How the chips actually work

The implants are passive RFID/NFC tags, the same family of technology as a contactless travel card, a hotel key card or the chip inside a modern pet microchip. "It's just completely passive, it has no energy source or anything," Österlund told NPR. The chip sits silently until a compatible reader is held a few centimetres away. The reader's radio field powers the chip for a moment, and the chip answers with a stored identifier and, in some models, a small amount of data such as a web link or contact card.

That design explains both what the chips can do and what they cannot:

• They can act as a key or a token. If a door system, gym turnstile or ticketing database has been told "this ID belongs to Anna," Anna can open that door with her hand.
• They cannot do anything on their own. A shop, bank or train company that has never registered the ID simply sees an unknown number, if its reader picks it up at all.
• They cannot broadcast a location. With no battery and a range of a few centimetres, an implant like this is not a GPS tracker. Satellite positioning needs constant power and an antenna, and no implantable GPS device is on the market.

So the viral headline that Swedes were "using them to access literally everything" stretched the story. Each use depended on a business choosing to support the chip, and in 2018 that was a fairly short list.

Train tickets on SJ and other everyday uses

The most talked-about example was SJ, the state-owned rail company and Sweden's largest train operator. From 2017 it allowed passengers with an implant to link their chip to an SJ membership, so that a booked ticket was attached to the chip's ID. During the journey the conductor scanned the passenger's hand with a phone, much as they would scan a printed or mobile ticket, and the system confirmed the booking. SJ reportedly counted around 100 chip users by mid-2017.

It is worth being precise: the chip did not "pay" for the trip. The ticket was bought in the usual way and the hand simply replaced the phone screen or paper at inspection. Early users also reported teething problems; media at the time described a glitch in which staff scanning a hand were shown the passenger's LinkedIn profile, which some people stored on the chip, instead of their ticket.

Other common uses were the familiar ones: unlocking office doors, entering gyms, sharing a digital business card by tapping a phone, and storing an emergency contact. Contactless payment from an implant was experimented with but, in 2018, was not something you could use at any Swedish checkout.

Why Sweden, of all places?

Sweden was an unusually receptive place for this experiment. The country built fast internet early with public support in the 1990s, and it has moved further from cash than almost anywhere else. NPR noted that only about one in four Swedes used cash in a typical week, and that the share of retail transactions paid in cash fell from around 40 percent in 2010 to roughly 15 percent by 2018.

Researchers also point to high public trust in banks, companies and state institutions, and to a culture already used to sharing a personal identity number for everyday tasks. For people who already tap a card or phone dozens of times a week, a chip in the hand can feel like a small step rather than a leap.

Still, a few thousand people in a country of about ten million is a tiny minority. The implants were a curiosity that made international news, not a national norm.

The clip above, from the Chinese broadcaster CGTN, shows how the hand scan works at a door and on a train.

The real privacy and health questions

Dropping the GPS myth does not make the concerns go away; it moves them to where they belong. The chip itself holds very little. The sensitive part is the database behind it: who links your ID to your name, your train trips, your gym visits and your office entries, and who can see those logs. That is the same question you would ask about a loyalty card or a work badge, except that you cannot leave an implant in a drawer.

Security researchers have shown for years that simple RFID identifiers can be read and cloned with a handheld device held close enough, so an implant is not automatically more secure than a card. Österlund argued the opposite risk was lower, saying a chip under the skin is "harder for someone to get to." Both points can be true at once: it is harder to steal, but no harder to copy if the reader is close.

British microbiologist Ben Libberton, then working in Sweden, called for closer oversight in 2018, worrying that future chips might hold health or biometric data and noting that no national law specifically regulated the industry. On the medical side, reported problems with implants include infection, rejection and occasional difficulty with MRI scans, though the evidence on MRI risk is limited. Anyone considering an implant should talk to a doctor and choose a practitioner who follows proper hygiene standards.

Consent is the other key point. Several US states, starting with Wisconsin in 2006, have passed laws that make forced microchip implantation illegal, and Washington state passed a ban on employers requiring implants in 2026. In Sweden in 2018 every implant was voluntary.

What to take away

The Swedish chip story is real, but smaller and more ordinary than the headlines suggested. A passive implant is essentially a contactless key you cannot lose. It is convenient for doors and some tickets, useless wherever no system recognises it, and incapable of tracking you on its own. The questions worth asking are about the services that read it: what they record, how long they keep it, and whether you can say no. Those are good questions for every contactless card in your wallet too.

Sources: NPR: Thousands Of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin (October 2018); Wikipedia: Microchip implant (human); original report via Daily Mail; video by CGTN.