Customers of the Lanour Beauty Lounge in Dubai’s World Trade Centre can now have an NFC chip attached to their fingernail as part of a manicure, enabling them to store personal data and transfer it to NFC-enabled devices with a tap of their chip-bearing ‘smart nail’. smart manicure
The chip is placed on to the nail and then covered by a layer of glitter nail polish. It can then be used to “share your contact details, Instagram or LinkedIn profile and much more with a tap on your nail”.
“While the amount of data it can store is quite small for now, CEO Nour Nakarem hopes that the technology will advance to the point where people can pay for bills, share menus, and circulate information at the tap of a finger,” UAE’s What’s On magazine reports.
So how does the microchip – smart manicure work?
According to Lanour Beauty Lounge, the microchip manicure uses “near-field communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that makes smartphones, tablets, wearables, payment cards and other devices even smarter.”
When you tap your ‘chipped finger to a smart phone, the data is transferred within seconds. You can upload personal data to your microchip, such as your WhatsApp details, a digital business card, or your Instagram handle.
Is the microchip manicure safe?
All sound like something out of a Black Mirror episode?
If you don’t like the idea of having your personal details – quite literally – at your fingertips, you’ll be please to hear that the microchip is a ‘passive device’, meaning it can’t be tracked and can only be read through a close proximity of one to two centimetres.
The smart manicure is designed to last three weeks and costs 250 dirhams (US$68).
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