
Coin, Wocket, Plastc: The all-in-one cards trying to sprint ahead of Apple Pay - nikunjk
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/coin-wocket-plastc-the-all-in-one-cards-trying-to-sprint-ahead-of-apple-pay/
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devindotcom
I'm fully aware I'm buying into a rather risky and possibly disappointing
piece of tech with Coin. That's a risk I was aware of when I paid up, because
the potential gain for me is pretty big. I'm always forgetting gift cards, my
card looks just like a bunch of my friends, making mix-ups common, and I like
to carry as little as possible in my pocket — generally I leave the house now
with my license, one card, and a twenty. A smart card helps me achieve this.
I'd like to give it a shot.

Just about everything I've backed on Kickstarter and elsewhere has been
delayed or had its features tweaked. I kind of assume that will be the case
now! If you're not okay with that, the early adopter game is probably not for
you, and that's a perfectly reasonable reason to avoid it.

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fitshipit
This kind of talk is what bothers me about investment in this industry -- I've
never seen anywhere else where people are so OK with no ROI. This is where all
the dumb money in SV is coming from.

~~~
jmathai
Not sure I see your argument. Credit cards can obviously be improved upon and
it doesn't seem that credit card companies are doing much in regards to its
form factor and ease of use.

We've got a couple choices. 1) Wait for companies that have enough R&D budgets
to develop something that doesn't directly cost consumers or 2) fund another
company to do so.

For #2 it doesn't differ much if that comes from a VC firm or crowdfunding
campaign besides the VC firms adding a layer of abstraction.

I agree that we don't see this kind of money flowing around in other
industries but you also don't see much change on most industries.

I'm not advocating the VC model or saying that SV spends money on what I
believe are the most important problems. But I'm also not seeing how it's dumb
money.

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gojomo
Five years ago, these would be futuristic.

Now, compared to a pure-phone solution, they're retrograde: an _extra_ thing
to carry, perhaps useful to interface with legacy, insecure magstripe-readers.
"A day late and a dollar short."

~~~
felix
Do you honestly shop at only places w/ NFC readers? Do you not eat at
restaurants? Do you not take cash out at ATMs? I mean - sure Apple Pay is
slicker and maybe more secure - but I can not imagine anyone now ditching
plastic to go 100% Apple Pay, Google Wallet, whatever.

I like it when internet folk comment about current technology as legacy
because some tiny fraction of its market now uses something new and shiny.

~~~
ryanhuff
With the prospect of fraud liability in the US shifting to the merchants
starting next fall, many merchants will be swapping in terminals that are EMV
compliant. I suspect many of these merchants will go for a terminal that also
has NFC.

[http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2014...](http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-
finance/articles/2014/10/28/coming-next-fall-more-chip-and-pin-cards-in-the-
us)

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deedubaya
I backed Coin on kickstarter, and am yet to get mine. It was supposed to be in
my hands in November after delays, and now it is nearly January and haven't
heard a word from them.

~~~
walls
I actually just got a shipping notice for my "Beta Coin" yesterday. So at
least something is happening.

~~~
felix
Note. Shipping notice does not actually imply actually shipping, as I just
discovered from their customer service agent. It just means they've created a
shipping label for you and some time in the future (exactly when he didn't
know) it will be used to ship you your coin.

~~~
walls
Late reply, but they definitely shipped it, and it works really well:
[http://i.imgur.com/WsuBttk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/WsuBttk.jpg)

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sp332
How does the EMV compatibility work? I thought the point of EMV is that you
couldn't copy/forge it.

~~~
ohazi
I think the plan is to partner with issuing banks and convince them to reissue
emv-like tokens to plastc when a card is added (similar to what apple pay does
with tokens over an NFC link).

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benchess
Also Stratos [https://stratoscard.com/](https://stratoscard.com/)

