NFC travel card implanting

cym0k

Hi

I recently moved to Japan and the rail system over here uses an NFC contactless smart card for fares. 

The Suica Card

When I first arrived I did a bit of research and found that you had to insert the card into a machine to put money on it, so my idea of implanting it in my arm came to a halt. Fast forward one year and I have just found out that you can charge these in stores via the contactless pay point!

The technology is similar to London's Oyster card, except it requires less personal details to use. There is a small chip and aerial housed in the card which enables the tech to work its wonders.

On to my idea: I want to embed the card, or at least its circuitry in my outer forearm just above the wrist. The issues are making the card biocompatible, ensuring it does not shift or cause trauma when inside and general wear and tear/how robust it is. 

I have a guy who is capable of performing the implant surgery (same guy who did my tongue split and dermal beading), but I am looking for more specialised knowledge before moving forward. The card itself is a standard credit card sized affair, with printed graphics (as the wiki link shows).

Any thoughts on this are appreciated. 

zombiegristle

Is there a particular need to implant the card's circuitry, or could you duplicate the information on the card and write it to an NFC implant like the one from dangerousthings.com?

mkabala

Since this card is being used in Japan, it's most likely using Sony's Felica card specification.  This is another variant of RFID technology.  There is an RFID chip embedded inside the card along with a small coil around the perimeter of the card that serves as the antenna.

Unfortunately, it would be hard to remove the circuitry from the card without damaging it.  Attempting to implant something subdermally with the surface area of a credit card would cause problems with the skin directly over the card.  That skin would effectively be cut off from the nervous system that gives it feeling and from the circulatory system that nourishes the living tissue that makes up the skin.  Similar problems have been encountered with much smaller implants.

A better solution might be to encase the circuitry into a capsule, similar to a pet RFID tag, but I doubt that your transit system is willing to provide their ID's in this form.  If you were somehow able to extract the chip from your card intact and attach a new antenna that would fit inside a glass capsule, this could work,  but it's beyond the capability of most home labs to achieve this level of microscopic precision.

@Amal has much more experience with RFID implants than I do.  He has been able to successfully encapsulate several different types of RFID chips suitable for implantation.  Hopefully he will weigh in and correct any errors in what I have said.

ThomasEgi

hm. extracting the chip may not be neccessary. it should be good enough if you cut the credit card off around the chip, and dissolve the edges to get access to the antenna wire. that should give you a chip the size of a micro-sd-card with 2 tiny wires sticking out. you'd have to solder a new, smaller yet matching antenna to it. not easy, but certainly possible to do that at home.

probably best to practice this procedure on cheaper cards. also the new antenna has to be designed carefully so the resonating circuit will work.
my guess would be you can get it to the size of a regular sim-card.