Your pet's microchip may now be useless after chip company goes out of business

2/16/2026 at 5:04:37 AM

The title is misleading: the chip isn't useless, it is basically NFC and can be read just fine. The number on it can be looked up in a registry to notify the owner of a lost pet. I believe there is nothing preventing you from registering the same number with multiple registries. Hope that helps.

by tomyedwab

2/16/2026 at 6:17:15 AM

> I believe there is nothing preventing you from registering the same number with multiple registries

Most cities require you to register your pet and get a license. Part of that process is to share the microchip number, vaccine records, vet info etc. Our local animal shelter usually checks with the city if a microchip is found but no ownership is established.

by darth_avocado

2/16/2026 at 7:27:52 AM

What city requires you to register your pet and get a license? I’ve never heard of that before. Sounds kind of crazy. I’m assuming this is very regional.

by OkGoDoIt

2/16/2026 at 2:44:37 PM

Every city in Ohio for one.

https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-955.01

by fanatic2pope

2/16/2026 at 9:18:38 AM

Out of interest, why does it sound kind of crazy?

Here, pets have always had to be identifiable: historically with a collar, but microchips have been required for some years now as a more effective method.

(That applies nationally, not some city thing)

by jdsnape

2/16/2026 at 4:53:59 PM

All 50 states have dog licensing in some form, but it seems that it's more a case of the state allowing municipalities to do so or not. Some states also require veterinarians to report unlicensed dogs. Larger cities almost certainly require it (NYC and Chicago definitely do).

https://www.rover.com/blog/dog-license/

Usually it's an animal welfare and control thing: you pay a lot more if you don't spay/neuter, rabies vaccination is required, etc.. Otherwise it's too easy for a city to be overrun by strays.

Also, if your pet gets lost and ends up being picked up by animal control, it's considered a stray if it's not registered.

by redwall_hp

2/16/2026 at 9:39:02 AM

If I remember correctly, EU will make chip tracking for pets mandatory by 2030 to unify laws that are currently made by individual states. France had this mandatory for over a decade.

If you want to travel within EU with your pet, you'll need a certificate for that as well.

No idea about how it is is the US but that doesn't sound crazy to register pets as they are at risk of being lost, abandonned, lacking vaccination or vets visits.

by Sayrus

2/16/2026 at 10:26:57 AM

You know, I regularly lose or forget my baseball caps (at least once per Summer, and usually I go through 2 or 3). I wish there was a nationally-mandated register of headwear, with obligatory chipping at the points of sale. Not even entirely joking.

On a more serious note, it's interesting to note that some property never gets any ownership marks on it, some gets it customarily but only out of convenience, there is no legal obligation to do so, and for some property it is legally-mandated by the state but owners largely find it cumbersome.

by Joker_vD

2/16/2026 at 2:48:43 PM

For maybe 100 years, we’ve lived in an era of diminished hat importance. I, for one, don’t want to be caught hatless around any sharp-tongued re-enactors.

by sigwinch

2/16/2026 at 3:40:05 AM

This has happened before. I think given the legalisms around pets, ownership, responsibility, all of the chip registry companies should have been required to put the data into escrow, with a recovery plan and a handler of last resort in the form of a CSV file or something.

by ggm

2/16/2026 at 4:57:02 AM

DNS would be fine, too. At minimum, a LOC record for a helpful neighbor.

by sigwinch

2/16/2026 at 5:37:11 AM

I didn't expect "just put it in the DNS" to translate to "woof woof woof woof woof" but .. it kind of makes Woof.

by ggm

2/16/2026 at 11:36:25 PM

NFC chips can store a fair amount of data (think QR code). Why bother with the database? Why is the standard not just saving one's email and phone number to the chip?

by benabbott

2/16/2026 at 11:14:53 PM

it's not useless. it just produces a number that is stored on a database. you can register it with another database if needed, although it would have been good if someone could transfer the records from the ailing company.

by didntknowyou

2/16/2026 at 4:46:58 AM

Is it safe to get multiple chips? They’re about the size of a grain of rice, so it shouldn’t be too unwieldy to get chipped from a couple of different vendors at the same time. With a chip, GPS collar, maybe an AirTag, that’s about all you can do besides lots of training.

by treesknees

2/16/2026 at 11:16:34 PM

there's no point in getting another chip. the existing chip will still work, you can just register the data with another database.

by didntknowyou

2/16/2026 at 5:07:25 AM

The chip will still be working after 24PetWatch is gone, you can enroll the same serial to more providers i.e. AKC Reunite.

by yftsui

2/16/2026 at 6:18:24 AM

Or your city when you register your pet

by darth_avocado

2/16/2026 at 5:01:34 AM

The microchip stores nothing but a serial number. I don’t quite understand the design that you would need a vendor to maintain a database between the serial and owner information, why not just store owner phone number like a traditional dog tag?

by yftsui

2/16/2026 at 8:04:59 AM

Dog tags are easy to replace. Microchips are not. Having a level of indirection allows the meaningful contact information to be updated as needed.

by gizmo686

2/16/2026 at 2:58:40 PM

You don't want the chip to be reprogrammable or wipeable.

by sigwinch

2/16/2026 at 1:45:12 PM

It's a permanent primary key into "an" owner database. Unfortunately, there are 40+ databases as there are that many registration companies. I don't even know if there's a unified interface to query all of them simultaneously. Does anyone know how the queries work if a pet be registered in some small or obscure registry that's not supported by every shelter/agency?

by burnt-resistor

2/16/2026 at 1:41:06 PM

In the US, there are something like 40+ pet chip registration companies. The problem of fragmentation is that the portable NFC chip ID number needs to be associated with each of them. This is dubious in the age of private equity and a total market failure. This is something that should be run as a single nonprofit to avoid this useless and unnecessary confusion.

by burnt-resistor