A Taiwanese man has been getting a lot of attention on social media after getting a payment app barcode permanently tattooed on his forearm.

The unnamed man recently took to the Taiwanese social media platform Dcard to share a functional barcode tattoo. Apparently, they had been contemplating getting a tattoo for a while, but they wanted something special instead of the artsy things people get inked. One day, while thinking about how cumbersome it was to constantly have to pull out his smartphone to pay for stuff, it hit him: why not get a functional tattoo to solve that problem? So he had a tattoo artist ink his payment app barcode on his forearm so he wouldn’t have to use his phone anymore.

Now, that kind of tattoo seems simple enough, but as others have pointed out, if the tattoo artist makes one of the bars too thick or too thin, or if one of the gaps between them is a bit wider than those in the actual barcode, it will not work as intended.

However, in this case, the tattoo artist did bang-up job, as the OP shared several videos of themselves using the forearm tattoo to pay for things at convenience stores and gas stations without a hitch. He admitted that people sometimes stare at him, shocked that his tattoo actually works, but he has had no problem paying with it so far.

Although his tattoo garnered a lot of attention, the original poster advised those considering to follow in his footsteps to think twice. The risk of getting the barcode wrong is significant, and he himself has no idea how the tattoo will hold up in the future, or what kind of maintenance it will require.

Barcode and QR tattoos are just two of the ways people are using to make their daily lives easier. Others are implanting chips under their skin for the same reason.

 

Source: Dcard