Chip implants replace ID cards at Swedish firm

Workers inside a new Swedish office block area are getting computer chips implanted under their skin instead of using ID cards.

With the small radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips pushed under the skin in the hand, employees can open doors or use the photocopier.

The chips had been offered to the 400 people who had signed up to the Epicenter hi-tech office block in Sweden, which included the BBC's technology reporter Rory Cellan-Jones, who said that when a tattooist put it in there ''was a moment of pain - not much worse than any injection - and then he stuck a plaster over my hand''.

The pioneers of the chips hope that they would at some time become common enough to be used to pay for sandwiches in the canteen, or even replace passwords and PINs to get into computers. They could also be programmed to hold contact information and communicate with smartphone apps.

All workers at the office are being offered chip implants, which is being done by a Sweden-based biohacking group. According to the group, implanting the technology would lead people to think about how it might be used for even more dystopian purposes.

Hannes Sjoblad, chief disruption officer at the office development, told the BBC, ''We want to be able to understand this technology before big corporates and big government come to us and say everyone should get chipped - the tax authority chip, the Google or Facebook chip."

Sjoblad has built his electronic business card into the chip, which others could then access using their smartphones.

The whole office would be internet-enabled with its building management run through Microsoft's ''internet of things'' technology. That would tell facility managers when a plant needs watering or a meeting room needed emptying, all through connected appliances and sensors.

Epicenter, a ''members-only workplace collective and innovation hub'', promises to pioneer new ways of working and has been built by Swedish property company AMF Fastigheter, and counts Microsoft among its members.