Pretty impressive concept and different approach to a lot of the “new” payment techniques. It’ll be interesting to see if they make it all the way to production, but for it only hitting the news ~12hrs ago, it’s certainly got a lot of buzz around it and some impressive people on their staff it seems.
Interesting but it will face a few major challenges:
Branding form the banks - non existent with this card. There are billions spent on branding, strategy, standing out etc from the rest of the cards by each bank.
Different Merchant Services rates/fees when swiping - this is huge.
Fraud - make it way to easy to “enter” stolen cards into this single card. Risk factor has gone up ten fold.
There are more but those three are the major ones that come to mind.
Another item I found interesting a while back was bitcoins. That’s a different topic but the concept is intriguing yet terrifying if you think about it.
^Well you’re not actually signing up for a card. You’re basically just copying the magnetic code for quick access, just like a hotel key card. So I don’t think the “branding” is any issue for them. But as far as other cards not getting their free advertising by customers using it, then yes, they won’t appreciate that much.
Again, merchant service charges shouldn’t be an issue. Other than them not seeing it’s an amex right off the bat to deny. But if you don’t have a merchant account setup with amex, then it won’t actually process so it’s a null point. Amex is really the only main card provider that certain merchants will deny payment due to Amex’s higher processing fees. It’s the only card I use though really.
The entering stolen cards, is valid. But at the same time, it theoretically protects you more from having your cards stolen since when it’s outside of bluetooth range it will lock out and not allow any charges after a certain time period. Plus it will remind you it’s outside of range on your phone.
I kinda doubt a thief is going to pay $100 bucks for the card, setup an account tied to a name and personal information, and then put in stolen cards via someone else. Seems like it puts a lot more of a paper trail on them, and can be done much easier by just re-apply magnetic code to cards they’ve already stolen.
The one real interesting one is how they will get around the identification verification. If it had a hard printed name on the front so you could validate via a drivers license, that will probably be crucial. Especially around the holidays, stores are trained not to accept payment via card without referencing the name to the driver’s license.
No Chip and PIN?
I think this may be big!
If they engineer a safety mechanism in it to where to can toggle it on or off from distance would make consumers feel better about security
Branding doesn’t really apply here because it is its own brand and does not compete with anything else out there; only makes what is out there more convenient
I found that interesting when I had a quick scan of the details last night. It seems they don’t have chip/pin “yet”… which probably means they tried implementing it and failed or was shot down by the EMV conglomerate. This technology is expanding quickly and gives me a slightly better sense of security…for me it’s a deal killer if they don’t have it out of the gate.
Already does.
I’m assuming when outside of blue tooth range and card is selected (i.e paying for check as restaurant) it is locked to the one card.
But if it is outside of bluetooth range for an extended period of time (I’m guessing 15-30 min) the card shuts down completely and won’t access any of the cards information until paired back to your coin bluetooth account (if you phone dies this could be an issue, but may just need 1 backup card). If you loose your phone, you can log into your coin account on your new phone and it re-activates the card.
I never use a pin code so I can’t say much to that regard. If I try to use a pin code, amex will probably deny and call me as it doesn’t fall into my typical spending nature. Most of my cards I don’t have a cash back option available. Only my debit card which is rarely used or even carried.
Here is how I see it. The item is smart as it will save people time and reduce clutter. But…There are too many fraud obstacles involved currently. Think of the original card issuers (banks, are they going to want to still be held accountable for their fraud protections services and liabilities when a new company is opening them up to more risks? No way imo.
Once these issues are addressed they could have a nice product offering and set a new trend. Until those fraud issues are addressed, I can’t see it going main stream for a while. Just my $.02.
All really good issues and I wasn’t looking at it in that light.
Last week I emailed them about the name verification and this was their response:
[quote]The display on the front of the card will show your CVV number, expiration date, card type and either a four-letter nickname or the last 4 digits of the selected card. The back of the card will have your name printed and will include a tamper-evident signature panel just as a standard credit card.
Thanks,
Karthik
[/quote]
I’d love it just to reduce the number of loyalty cards I carry around in my George Costanza wallet. And I’m with maddog about the amex thing. One all you can eat sushi place nearby stopped taking Amex just because my card was losing them money… $15 processing fees on a $14 meal