
Coin: A step in the wrong direction - lowglow
http://www.techendo.co/posts/coin-a-step-in-the-wrong-direction
======
jmduke
I dislike this article: it seems to suffer from 'perfect is the enemy of
good'-itis and willful misunderstanding of how complex -- and difficult --
commerce can be.

The author basically argues that things should be wonderful and easy and the
service providers should handle it all (ignoring the difficulties of such a
provision):

 _I should use a plastic card, cheap, easily replaceable, low cost (free in
most cases), and my card account should buffer my purchase as long as the
combined total of credit /cash in my accounts is greater than or equal to my
purchase. I should then be able to place either the entirety of my purchase or
parts of my purchase in separate accounts that provide different benefits.
(Think, business, flight mileage, cash back rewards, etc) The service should
often be smart enough to learn where I move my purchase and do so
automatically if I so choose._

and

 _I believe we should be moving away from cards altogether. I think google
wallet, square, and other RFID /NFC technologies are thinking about the
future, where our devices are consolidated and integrated with the world
around us. Bitcoin, a virtual currency, proves the success of something that
exists purely in the aether, and keeping a Bitcoin wallet on your phone is
easy._

How is going from 'wallet filled with cards' to 'one card' not a step in the
right direction to 'no cards'? Maybe the technology or industry isn't moving
as fast as the author would like, but it's entirely hyperbolic to say that
Coin's trajectory runs opposite from the author's ideal vision.

Coin's goal is to abstract the ownership of a credit card away from the
plastic itself. If you want RFID/NFC to succeed -- as the author does, as I
do, and as I'm sure many other people do, then that's a good thing.

(The preorder legality side of things isn't my domain, so I can't really
comment on that.)

~~~
bradgessler
Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of
an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until
then, we have to deal with it somehow.

~~~
brettgoldstein3
Isn't the "old crusty infrastructure" in this case the credit card itself?

It seems ridiculous to try to kill the credit card with... a credit card.

I wouldn't be surprised if Clinkle, LoopPay, Square, or any of the many
startups in this space kills the credit card (and thus Coin) before Coin makes
its first delivery in Summer 2014.

~~~
devindotcom
Square, which is a point-of-sale system? Two other things, which the
_billions_ of people who use credit cards every day have never heard of?

What would constitute "killing" the credit card, anyway? Less than 5% of the
population using it? I don't see that happening for a good 15 or 20 years at a
bare minimum.

~~~
vidarh
Do keep in mind, though, that of the "billions of people" who use credit
cards, the number that use cards that can be cloned by reading the magnetic
stripe is fast dwindling. Until/unless Coin gets cosy enough with the card
associations to the point where they can get some way of cloning chip and pin
cards (EMV), they're DOA in a quickly rising list of countries that already
covers the majority of the developed world.

And a large part of the _point_ of chip and pin cards is that they're meant to
be impossible to clone. E.g. in France it supposedly cut card fraud by about
80% for in-person transactions. So unless Coin can convince them that it will
be as secure or more secure than these cards, they're going to be pretty much
limited to the US, and increasingly get marginalised in the US too: Most large
US banks have announced rollout plans for EMV cards (though many will be chip
+ signature rather than chip + pin).

------
aclimatt
To clarify about the pre-order issue: There's nothing inherently wrong with
asking for funds to push the development of a product forward. Kickstarter has
done a great job of promoting that model, and the world has seen a lot of good
come out of it.

However, Kickstarter has also done a lot of work to _educate_ the public about
the risk of this type of funding (certainly to their own legal benefit or
otherwise), and thus the public can better understand that they are dontating
money toward a dream, versus buying the next generation video game console a
few weeks before it comes out.

Coin is taking your money to bring a product to market, while acting like that
product already exists. Answers in the FAQ like "we don't take your shipping
address because you might move" are a willfully ignorant slap in the face,
because they are far more likely the ones at risk of going out of business
than me moving houses.

If they said very clearly that you were funding a new product with all the
inherent risks, like Lockitron did, this would be a different story. But not
educating the consumer about what's actually going on is exactly what the FTC
is trying to protect against.

~~~
samuelkadolph
Actually this is very much illegal. You cannot charge someone for a product
and then not deliver it. Kickstarter doesn't charge you for a product, you
pledge or donate to a project on Kickstarter and if it's successful, you get
the item(s) for the level you pledged to for free.

~~~
Semaphor
So there is a part where the US has stronger consumer protection laws than
Germany? Interesting.

Besides that, why are digital goods pre-orders seemingly allowed?

~~~
InclinedPlane
If something has a well-defined shipping date then pre-orders are allowed.
This is one reason why you can buy tickets to events well in advance.

~~~
Semaphor
Ah, thanks that explains it. Different in Europe though.

------
carsongross
The hating on Coin is unbelievable. It seems like a great first step towards
backwards-compatible card consolidation.

Are there going to be issues with it? Of course.

Will it last in the long run? Well, the phone thing is obvious, kids. I bet
these guys are aware of that and have a plan.

Regardless, its an innovative piece of hardware that moves the ball. That's
better than any of the shit I've built.

~~~
ams6110
For me, it's like the classic Spolsky critique of the "Cue Cat". It's solving
a problem that I don't have. I carry a wallet anyway to contain my ID, my
cash, and other cards that are not credit cards. Carrying a couple of credit
cards along with all that is not a problem.

I personally don't have any hate for Coin or what they are trying to do; I
hope they are successful. But it's not something I would buy.

~~~
jahewson
Exactly. Currently in my wallet: a California driver's license, a Green Card,
a medical insurance card, and a gym card which works via barcode. There's also
a credit and a debit card. Thats's just 2/6 which I could replace with Coin.

~~~
danudey
Debit card, credit card, starbucks card, transit pass, home depot gift card,
health card, two private health insurance cards, costco card, driver's
license, and a rewards card from a local restaurant.

Both my debit card and credit card are chip-and-PIN cards, so I can't replace
this with card, and none of the rest have magnetic stripes that anyone
actually uses (the few cards that do have stripes, like my Costco card and
driver's license, also have my picture on them and I can't replace them with a
generic card).

This will be super useful for some people, but not for most people.

------
brianmcconnell
Two issues with Coin. One is this has been done before, exact same approach,
and it did not work out because the card issuers didn't buy in (a credit card
is also part of the issuing bank's brand). Maybe that's changed in the past
few years, but I am skeptical.

The second issue is it's solving a problem that isn't really a problem. I use
two cards on a regular basis. I have others but rarely need to carry them with
me. So I can reduce two slots in my wallet to one. Doesn't seem like enough of
a benefit to me.

Lastly, I can see all sorts of issues with merchants not knowing what these
are, and being wary of accepting them due to perceived fraud risk. Something
that reprograms its mag stripe practically yells "FRAUD!".

So I appreciate the technical innovation behind this, but I think they're
likely to get dashed upon the rocks. It's a tough space. I thought Google
Wallet with Android NFC would be super convenient. It wasn't. I went back to
the old fashioned swipe. So its hard to see this catching on with ordinary
consumers.

~~~
cypher543
> One is this has been done before, exact same approach, and it did not work
> out because the card issuers didn't buy in

The card issuers don't have to buy in to anything. You program the Coin
yourself using your existing cards.

> I use two cards on a regular basis. I have others but rarely need to carry
> them with me. So I can reduce two slots in my wallet to one. Doesn't seem
> like enough of a benefit to me.

Ah, the old "It's of no use to me, so what's the point?" argument. You're not
the person the Coin is targeting. It's for people who have more cards than
they can comfortably carry in their wallet.

> Lastly, I can see all sorts of issues with merchants not knowing what these
> are, and being wary of accepting them due to perceived fraud risk.

I'll admit that I don't shop in many brick and mortar stores, but when I have,
the cashiers have never so much as glanced at my cards. Most of the time, the
scanner is out of their view anyway. I can see it possibly being a problem if
they have to scan it for you (like at a restaurant or something), but I'd be
willing to bet that most people just aren't going to care enough to make a
fuss about it.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>cashiers have never so much as glanced at my cards

Depends on where you shop. Some stores (particularly big box stores -- Best
Buy comes to mind) always ask to see the card and ID. If they do, it's a
showstopper for it to not be real. There's NO WAY a store with that policy
would let you buy something with an anonymous black "card".

Not only does this scream "FRAUD!", it almost certainly WILL be used for
fraud, almost immediately on release. Think of how easy it would be to allow a
server at a restaurant to "steal" someone's card -- photo and a swipe, and
POOF, you can use their card the next time you go somewhere that doesn't look
at the card. How long will it be before stores that DIDN'T ask to see it
before start asking, and specifically disallowing the use of these fraud-
enabling devices?

Regardless, there's no way I'd risk getting to the point of purchase somewhere
and finding out at that point they won't accept my card. And I AM part of
their target market: I probably have 8 cards in my wallet, maybe 10. It's
complicated, but they all have a unique need that makes me carry them.

I'd love to have something like this that "just worked," but I doubt this
would be it without orders of magnitude more education and many layers of
security protection to prevent fraud -- probably enough layers to be an
impediment to people actually signing up to use it (receiving physical mail
being required to register a new card comes to mind).

~~~
mortehu
> Some stores (particularly big box stores -- Best Buy comes to mind) always
> ask to see the card and ID

It seems odd that big stores would require this, since this is explicitly
forbidden in the merchant agreements. Also, I've never experienced this myself
in the US.

1\. [http://www.mastercard.us/support/problems-using-
mastercard.h...](http://www.mastercard.us/support/problems-using-
mastercard.html) "A merchant must not refuse to complete a transaction solely
because a cardholder refuses to provide additional identification
information."

~~~
colinbartlett
Wow, I had no idea this rule existed. I've been to plenty of stores that
require ID for every purchase, especially here in NYC. I've even seen signs,
"All credit card purchases require ID, no exceptions."

------
lsh123
Plastic credit card costs next to nothing to manufacture, can be dropped from
a 10 story building (good luck finding it afterwards though), can get wet with
me in a heavy rain, can be replaced in 24 hours (at my bank) and I have $0
liability if I lose it or someone steals it from me. Compare this to Coin (or
other solutions like phone based payments) and you will see that it is indeed
a step in the wrong direction though not for the reasons discussed in the
article.

~~~
negrit
Credit/Debit Card can be replaced on the spot at some bank.

~~~
couchand
But then I have to go to the bank.

I'd rather have a chip in my arm.

~~~
lsh123
I just call the bank and tell them that I need to get a new card :)

------
pg
"Update: I've been currently gagged/banned from responding to HN comments.
Sorry."

For what it's worth, this is false.

~~~
lowglow
Cool. I didn't know if it was a bug or I was actually gagged/filtered, but my
reply button disappeared, then later reappeared. Glad I wasn't banned. :)

~~~
pg
There is a gradually increasing delay before the reply link appears, depending
on the depth of nesting of the thread. It's intended to create drag on
flamewars.

------
kin
I feel like some people on HN thrive so much on negativity. I don't even think
this feedback is constructive.

Look, author has 1 or 2 cards. I have an Amazon card, a Target card, a Debit
card, my FSA card, my Company credit card. I have rewards cards that I don't
keep in my wallet because I like to keep my wallet thin.

Like it or not, Coin presents a hopeful solution to solving this for me. And
don't go telling me I need to reduce the number of cards I have and simplify
my life. I don't want to hear it. I just want Coin's product to exist and
hopefully my pre-order is helping that.

On a side note, I'm not used to charge first ship later. Isn't Coin YC backed?
I'm surprised they need to rely on pre-orders for funding unless that was
their financial plan all along.

~~~
loganu
I feel like a lot of feedback could be useful if it was framed differently.
Everyone talking about the potential to lose multiple cards at once, or fraud,
or theft, or the 8-card limit seems to come at it from a position of snark and
sarcasm.

If you're smart enough to realize potential risks, you're probably smart
enough to ask if Coin's considered solutions to that use-case, or offer up a
suggestion. They've clearly spent more time thinking this through than we
have, and I doubt they've detailed everything on a marketing page and F.A.Q.

Personally, I'd be worried about travelling and my phone dying or disappearing
and effectively locking my card when that pre-determined time elapses. But I'm
sure that could be configured in the app, or workarounds created once this
goes live and more feedback comes in. (Web login, a friends' phone, etc.)

As for the product itself, I'd love to see it work. It would solve a problem
for me, and I'd happily replace my wallet with two of these and my driver's
license. Is it the best technology for solving consumer-merchant interactions?
Maybe, maybe not. But I'd rather see 15 companies develop divergent ideas
until a clear winner emerges than see everyone forced to Bitcoin, NFC, etc.

------
martin-adams
>> Visa requires that merchants ship a product prior to charging any Visa
debit card

This is very new to me. This source here:
[http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance-
guide...](http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance-guidelines-
for-visa-merchants.pdf)

States:

>> You should not bill the customer until merchandise has been shipped

That is a best practice, not a requirement.

~~~
dnm
That's an interesting document. One would think that Coin would be used in
"Card Present Transactions," however, none of the security features of a real
card can be verified using a Coin, since they don't exist. Why would a
merchant accept Coin?

~~~
danudey
This is an excellent point. You could make a series of purchases with your
Coin set to your credit card, use an obviously fake signature, then dispute
them all. The merchant can't claim that they checked the signature because
they obviously don't match, so any merchant that lets you use your card has
little recourse in the case of chargebacks.

------
gmjoe
This article is ridiculous and doesn't even have anything to do with Coin.

The first half isn't even criticizing Coin at all -- it's just saying the
author wishing there were even _better_ things. The author says "The problem
with these technologies is vendor adoption. It’s not here yet, but it’s on the
way." Yeah, it's been on the way for the past 10 years, but nothing's changed
yet! I don't see RFID/NFC anywhere I shop. But that's _not_ any reason for
Coin not to improve things in the here-and-now.

And the second half has nothing to do with Coin itself either, but is about
Kickstarter charging in general.

~~~
saidajigumi
> Yeah, it's been on the way for the past 10 years, but nothing's changed yet!

Along with transistor counts, other technologies follow a Moore's Law like
improvement curve. Network (bandwidth) technologies are among those, but they
have a strong step-function characteristic to their improvement. This accounts
for the delay in end-to-end deployment of hardware improvements needed. This
also creates a perception of sustained changelessness followed by rapid change
(e.g. dialup modems to DSL/Cable).

Any improvement to payment infrastructure suffers from a much more entrenched
form of the network upgrade problem. This stasis works to the benefit of
companies (e.g. Square) who can provide value without having to move the
world. Coin also fits into this opportunity/risk model.

The risk, which that quote hits on, is that Coin is already too late: if a
payment network transformation lands too soon, it could leave Coin's bright
idea in the dust. In that light, saying "it's been on the way for the past 10
years" is _more_ worrying rather than less.

But there are upsides. Imagine that Coin grows into its meta-card future,
eventually supporting EMV[1] as well as easy revocability and reissuance. Lose
your Coin? A quick report and it's revoked and all of your cards are reissued
onto a new Coin.

[1] Per Coin's FAQ, they do not support EMV, aka "chip and pin", yet. This is
problematic for non-U.S. usage:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV)

------
chavesn
It really seems like this author has some kind of bone to pick.

Banks aren't going away soon. Banks are not going to make it easy for third-
parties to proxy transactions soon. NFC or other non-card POS technologies are
not going to be everywhere soon.

Those are valid hopes or dreams, and I hope someone is working on it. But Coin
promises to be a product that will reduce many cards to one _now_.

And arguing whether a "pre-order" scheme is legal or not is kind of a moot
point: Pre-ordering customers show agree to the transaction, and show their
intent give Coin their money now for something later -- even if it is forced
by law to be done in a different matter.

~~~
jebus989
Why would banks go away? In the UK Barclays ran a load of ads a year or two
back about "PingIt", their app for sending money to phone numbers or paying
for things with QR codes.

I mention this because you propose banks as active resisters, but from how I
see it they stand to make significant efficiency gains by just maintaining an
app and website, as opposed to making plastic squares by the million,
maintaining thousands of ATMs, even still printing chequebooks...

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Slight tangent, but I'm pretty sure sending money to phone numbers is pretty
much how 90% of banking in Africa gets done, it seems like pretty cool stuff.
Also, I have a bank account with PNC, and if I need to send money to a friend,
all I need is their email address, and PNC sets up a transfer, and shoots them
an email with a link and instructions for retrieving the money/depositing it
into their (not necessarily PNC) bank account. Also the whole cashing a check
via taking a photo on my phone is a pretty awesome feature.

------
RRiccio
This would be like saying, in 1994, that Amazon was a step in the wrong
direction for selling books online instead of realizing that physical books
would stop existing altogether.

------
Link-
This article "is the step in the wrong direction".

I see nothing wrong with encapsulating/combining multiple mediums into one
solution. One solution that extends the innate functionality of magnetic cards
and provides additional functional layers. The author talks about Bitcoin as
being one of the "other" directions in the horizon, I believe that Bitcoin or
any other digital currency is on the same level as the magnetic cards. If Coin
is able to tap into your Bitcoin wallet and execute transactions, that would
help Bitcoin further infiltrate the market.

I also believe that Coin has the potential to provide an extra layer of
security that magnetic cards don't.

1) Coin can implement a one click/touch procedure to disable a given card at
any point in time and prevent its usage, which currently requires a call to
the bank and a bureaucratic nightmare to reactivate the card. (at least in my
country).

2) I'm sure Coin are able to implement an approval/rejection transaction
workflow adding an extra layer of control in case of unauthorized usage.

3) Coin can add a key based security layer to their application also
preventing unauthorized usage.

Really, the ideas are endless and this is why I love projects that are an
extension/middle-layer for other outdated technologies.

I think the hate is originating due to a narrow vision of this product's
potential.

------
tomasien
Coin is actually a step in the perfectly fine, sideways direction. It keeps
everything on the credit card rail - something where there are fees so
ridiculous that Congress actually PASSED legislation to limit them - that's
amazing.

Stripe, Square, Coin, whatever - they all are just more convenient ways to
make fee-based payments.

Why don't we just make payments from our banks directly? Did you know that's
not only possible, but extremely easy now AND feeless? What if you didn't have
to even give out your account number to merchants, what if you didn't even
need to KNOW your account number to make them? What if I've been processing
payments like this for 3 weeks now, have processed thousands of payments, and
have done so without asking the user for anything they didn't know off the top
of their head?

We don't need fees on our payments - if you agree and you're a developer who
takes payments, email me @ tommy@thecityswig.com and let's talk. Not gonna try
to sell you anything, I need your thoughts.

This is probably the first time you've heard me talk about this, but I'm
starting in the comment section here on HN to start getting the pulse. I can't
wait to discuss this hear in the coming months!

------
zamalek
This is definitely link bait. Indicate that a YCombinator startup is a waste
of time and you are guaranteed to get some hits. Or get upvoted on HN.

> I believe we should be moving away from cards altogether. I think google
> wallet, square, and other RFID/NFC technologies are thinking about the
> future, where our devices are consolidated and integrated with the world
> around us.

That's like, his opinion, man. I personally think that cards are going to be
around for a very long time whether we want them to be or not; for one simple
reason: infrastructure. There are just too many card readers in the wild to
feasibly displace the technology. For example, I can't use Google Wallet in
South Africa (even though I would love to be able to) because we simply don't
have NFC paypoints here. I doubt there will ever be. Dynamic cards seem like a
really clever compromise in the direction of that "perfect world," and when I
say "world" I mean it - cards are a world-wide technology. NFC is not.

The author clearly has a problem drawing a line between what is feasible and
what he wants. We probably all want NFC payments - the reality is that most of
the world won't get them.

If you really think about it all Coin are doing is creating a compatible addon
for existing card reader that let you use NFC (or BLE, but the technologies
are similar) with any of them.

> Legality of preordering

I am struggling to figure out how exactly this argument means that the cards
are a step in the wrong direction. His one commenter (Alec Joy) also points
this out:

> For those to lazy, or too trusting of Dan's word to click the link, I would
> like to present the first sentence of the article he linked to, and
> suspiciously the ONLY sentence of the response he omitted from his quote. >
> "It is not illegal for merchants to charge for a product before it has
> shipped. "

Shameless link baiting.

------
abalone
"I think google wallet, square, and other RFID/NFC technologies are thinking
about the future... The problem with these technologies is vendor adoption.
It’s not here yet, but it’s on the way."

The author is incredibly underestimating the difficulty of driving vendor
adoption of a new payment system.

Google just spent years and enormous amounts of money trying to drive vendor
adoption of Wallet, and has more or less given up on the NFC part.

Square's achieved the most so far, but only by bundling it with its POS &
processing service, which not all vendors are going to switch to (or even if
they took over the POS world it would take a decade).

Considering that's the crux of his argument, it's entirely unsupported.

------
nayefc
What this article suggests is pretty much impractical. The writer clearly does
not understand the financial / payments infrastructure. Coin is not perfect,
but at least they're taking a practical and pragmatic look on the problem.

------
namuol
Coin is _absolutely_ a step in the right direction for one simple reason: it
offers a convenient transition option.

Its most immediate use is to consolidate physical cards into one, but its true
_killer feature_ is the ability to instantly act as a physical proxy to a
digital account (i.e. BitCoin, Paypal).

Do you own a Blu Ray player? It's more than likely to also play DVDs. If it
takes a lot of time to get consumers to change over their media collections, I
can only imagine how much time it takes to move the financial industry.

Coin is sorely needed.

~~~
danudey
It can only act as a physical proxy to a digital account which uses magnetic
stripes as its primary physical form of transaction.

~~~
namuol
The data on a magstripe is just that: data. I'm suggesting that digital
services could offer you a digital "magstripe" without the need to ship cards.

~~~
PeterisP
The data on the magstripe is the trivial tiny visible part of the credit card
system iceberg. The major difficult part of the system (and any system that
wants to replace/improve creditcards) is the merchant & issuer network + the
international legal&liability issues, not the technical thingy given to
cardholders.

If you make a finished perfect technical device that's better than creditcards
- great job, you're 1% done in replacing CC's, wake me up when you're atleast
33% done on the other major issues.

------
shawnreilly
I am always paranoid when it comes to technology and money, and this will be
no exception. BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) has been around for 2-3 years now,
but I still consider it to be in it's infancy. This is especially true when it
comes to security. A quick Google Search produced two examples [1] and [2] of
potential security flaws with BLE pairing and authentication, and I'm sure
there are many more I'm not aware of. Building new payment technology based on
new and cutting edge communication frameworks does sound exotic and cool. It's
probably one of those "cool points" that gets investors excited. But for the
security minded folks out there, this is likely a red flag. Instead I see it
as building payment related technology on an un-proven communication
framework, and it just does not sound like a great idea. And it is because of
this that I will probably never personally use something like Coin regardless
of how useful it might be. All it takes is one person to create an effective
exploit, and there goes both your money and your trust in the Service. In any
event, good luck to Coin with this new Product, and I hope they prove me
wrong. If they are looking for a recommendation (which I'm sure they're not),
I would recommend a sharp focus on securing the BLE connections between the
Coin Wallet and the Smartphone Device.

[1] [http://lacklustre.net/bluetooth/](http://lacklustre.net/bluetooth/)

[2] [http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/309.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/309.pdf)

------
nickstinemates
> Coin is trying to replace your credit cards (no other cards, like ID, Buss
> Pass, etc) with a single electronic card.

After living in Hong Kong for 12 days, I can safely say they have a superior
system for this premise alone.

The octopus card. Accepted virtually everywhere any other card is accepted.
It's like any other e-wallet with load, but its ubiquity in service acceptance
is amazing.

Everyone has an octopus card. Everyone important to the infrastructure of the
country accepts octopus card.

~~~
yeukhon
No. octopus card is just another card but because people like using it so much
places like 7-11 won't mind to have it. You load money into the octopus card
(not sure if now banks allow account linking). At least when I was kid that
was how things worked.

------
ruswick
Coin is a very neat idea that will be hampered by many practical limitations.

How durable will it be? I routinely neglect to take my wallet out of my
pocket, and end up putting it through the wash. Can Coin survive total
immersion in water for an hour? What happens when my dog invariably decides to
chew up my wallet? What happens when I drop my Coin in sand?

Moreover, the cost of a Coin becoming inoperable is far greater than that of a
traditional card. Worst case scenario, my bank will send me a new card within
a few days, which will cost nothing because the cost of manufacturing plastic
cards is negligible. If my Coin breaks, I have to shell out another $100.
Unless Coin is as indestructible as plastic cards (which is highly doubtful
simply because the mechanics and circuitry in Coin create a level of
complexity far greater than that of a piece of solid plastic), It will end up
costing me more in the long run.

What about security? If I were to lose a plastic card, the maximum risk I'm
exposed to is a single account being defrauded. If my Coin falls into the
wrong hands, the bad guy has _absolutely everything._

In a perfect world, Coin would be great. Unfortunately, the limitations of
modern life and commerce make Coin impractical and even dangerous.

------
xster
Pretty link bait-y title. You'd expect an authoritative analysis of the
product but half of the article is a Fox News-y "some people don't like pre-
paying for pre-order" complain unrelated to the direction of payment systems.
The other half is a subjective anecdotal nice to have wishlist on the payment
industry. Sound shockingly contrarian and ride the popular topic, old trick in
the book.

------
aaron695
Not sure why people on HN are up voting an article putting down a new
YCombinator.

Even if it's valid, which I don't think it is it's not really what HN should
be about.

It's not constructive criticism since it basically writes a company off.

Even the legal issue is BS. So what if it's not 100% kosher if they get away
with it, good on them. All companies when they start take risks.

~~~
yeukhon
Why can't they do that? Just because this is a new startup? Are you saying a
hacker news reader have to buy in every startup concept funded by YC? I am
sorry, we have freedom to choose to upvote or downvote.

What do you mean legal issue is BS? You can't even use this damn card in Macy
because of legal issue.

------
sheri
Coin actually seems like it would be a pain from a usability stand-point. Say
I actually put in lots of my cards in there. Now, I go to Safeway, I need to
first keep clicking until I reach my rewards card. Then, I need to keep
clicking again until I reach my credit card. If I accidentally click ahead,
I'd need to loop over all my cards again.

------
kunai
What the author of this article just doesn't get is that Coin isn't supposed
to be a long-term solution (at least from my takeaway), nor is it something
that is intended to completely redefine the vision of future payments. What
Coin intends to do is provide a unified interface for payments right now,
_today_. Credit/debit cards are so ubiquitous that it's only natural we unify
them. It's 2013, and there's still no comprehensive NFC mobile payment
solution. Google Wallet can't really be used on a practical basis, and doesn't
give you much security – lose your phone, and you're pretty much screwed.

Coin is most definitely a step in the _right_ direction, and it's a simple
solution. One of the hallmark traits of great design is its obviousness -- and
Coin's design _is_ obvious. A credit card that can act as multiple credit
cards. Who would have thought?

------
mvkel
Ironic that this is the same author that praised Square, a technology that
brings credit cards to more businesses. He's also not in Coin's target
audience. He says himself he only uses two cards. Great! Coin isn't for you.

The technology is here. NFC has been in virtually every Android smartphone
since 2011, plus Google Wallet and Apple's Passbook. It's all here, ready to
go. Businesses, and consumers, aren't sold.

Regardless of my personal opinion on the crudeness of NFC, the problem is
point-of-sale systems are (at least) three years away from adopting these
technologies at any level of ubiquity.

Go to your nearest farmer's market, and they're still dealing in cash! Square
is doing wonderful things to bring credit card processing to the masses, but
_that_ is cutting edge. Coin is the next step on the consumer side.

------
endlessvoid94
Coin folks, please, for the love of god, ignore these people.

------
sciguy77
By his logic wouldn't Kickstarter be illegal? Many KS projects charge users
before making a product (they use Amazon to process the payment, but the
user's credit card is still charged, which may very well be a Visa). I think
this is a little silly.

~~~
aclimatt
I mentioned a reply to that as a parent above. The difference is the way
Kickstarter presents the projects and the terminology they use. They are not
asking for pre-orders, they are asking for pledges, and have a very clear
disclaimer in the top right about what that means. If the product page itself
were to claim that they were pre-orders for a product that couldn't ship yet,
then it as well could potentially be violating card agreements as well as the
rule from the FTC.

------
bicknergseng
I agree with the premise but not the details. I want my phone to be my keys
and wallet. Coin will consolidate the 3 credit cards I have to one, but I
still need to carry a wallet to hold my driver's license, gym card, medical id
card, and Clipper. There are (few) cars and after market solutions that allow
me to start/lock/unlock my car with my phone, but they feel half baked, and
it's not ubiquitous yet... most new cars you can buy in the foreseeable future
will come with keys and not an app. Replace my wallet and keys, Google or
Apple or Microsoft or (YC company). It's time.

------
dennisz
I agree with the article in that non-card based payments methods (Square) are
the future, but we've seen again and again that moving towards the future
takes steps (look at tablets - we had so many iterations on tablet computing
before we got to the iPad, and who knows if that's even the end all be all).

My point is that Coin is a much smaller stride for the typical consumer; only
SV geeks (guilty) are as excited about NFC payments as HN is, and the typical
person sees this aggregation of cards as 'technology' that they're much more
familiar with. No surprise that it's blowing up.

Just my two cents.

~~~
voltagex_
Australian banks are pretty excited about NFC payments, too.

[https://www.commbank.com.au/business/merchant-
services/maste...](https://www.commbank.com.au/business/merchant-
services/mastercard-paypass.html)

(Version 1)

(Version 2 & 3)

[https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/online-
banking/commbank...](https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/online-
banking/commbank-app/coming-soon.html)

Interesting that Android is a first-class citizen here.

------
swamplander
While you may think this is a step in the wrong direction, that's just an
opinion. While NFC / Bluetooth LE would be preferred so I can pay with my
phone, that would mean every merchant would need to have a reader that
supported that technology. Today only some merchants support paying with QR
codes. At the very least, COIN is a killer stop-gap solution, a convenient &
technical solution that would work with every merchant out there.

I personally had no issue giving them $55, the same concept behind
kickstarter, for the money to produce my goods. Consider me an investor of 1
unit.

------
jrochkind1
I am reasonably confident that people pre-order items, and are charged for
them before they ship, all the darn time.

For the OP to combine two entirely separate things--1) I think it's a bad
solution, and 2) and it's illegal to charge money that way--makes it just seem
like he has an axe to grind. Those things have nothing to do with each other.
The security issues are at least related to the technology, and he could have
brought them together: "I think it's a bad solution because it involves
challenges to doing it securely, as demonstrated by..."

But the payment stuff? Come on.

~~~
RandallBrown
I think the pre order issue is that most credit card companies require that a
pre order is just an authorization on the amount, not an actual transaction.
The money isn't supposed to change hands until the item is shipped.

Coin is completing the transactions and using the money to fund their venture.

It probably isn't black and white either. I am no expert on credit card
transactions.

I'm not too worried. I ordered one.

------
jxf
Coin is a great step forwards for consolidation, and it will probably make
future post-credit-card technologies more palatable. In that vein alone it's a
win.

That said, there's lots of reasons to be worried about Coin from a security
perspective. But, at least in the US, consumers bear few of the penalties and
costs associated with fraud -- only the credit card companies and banks do. So
we will likely see significant adoption from savvy consumers and some
resistance (or outright revolt?) from CC companies and banks.

------
txttran
For everyone who is poo-pooing Coin because it's not a digital wallet, please
answer this question: How long from now will most merchants that accept credit
cards also start accepting an e-wallet of some sort?

I honestly would be stunned if this happened in <10 years. I think we very
often underestimate how slow adoption rate is for new technology and how much
money can be made by playing nice with the incumbent technology instead of
trying to disrupt it from the onset.

~~~
jebus989
All of them accept online payments. It's really not a big leap to being able
to pay for something through their website while in their store and walk out
with it. Some places do this now, especially for bulky items, just scan the
barcode in-store and they'll deliver it your house.

If I'm carrying a wallet or keys in my pockets in 10 years I'll be pretty
disappointed.

~~~
Nursie
From the industry side of this - online payments suffer a lot more fraud and
just generally have a worse risk-profile than traditional "customer-present"
transactions.

Specifically online _card_ payments. Unsure about through other processing
facilities.

~~~
jebus989
What about combining online payments and customer-present, serve an intranet
over wi-fi?

------
goshx
So, this product is new. Nobody has used yet. However, it already got a bunch
of bad reviews. Why try to put a not even born yet business down if you are
not even competing against it in the first place?

I'd be interested to see a business coming up from the article's author from
the ideas he put in the article. But I guess writing a blog post is much
easier than investing time and money to build up something new to make some
people's life easier.

~~~
objclxt
> _Why try to put a not even born yet business down if you are not even
> competing against it in the first place?_

Because if we all just blindly praised every new business that came along and
never gave them our true opinions we'd have a lot more bankruptcies than you
have now (and that's saying something).

A large number of businesses fail because they have _terrible ideas_. If you
think a business has a bad idea why shouldn't you be allowed to tell them
that? Yes, there are businesses that succeed despite of everyone saying
otherwise. Good for them - but they're the minority.

~~~
frogpelt
If you think your opinion on a message board carries 5 cents worth of weight
to someone who has poured their heart and soul into a business idea, you're
mistaken.

In other words, you or me calling an idea horrible on the Internet is not
going to stop a bankruptcy. If Coin gets enough preorders they are going to
build a product, whether it is a failure or not.

------
aeturnum
I don't have a use for Coin - I have few cards, but the product reminds me of
a quote often attributed to Henry Ford, "If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses." While I think it's great for
people who have many cards, and there are probably tons of customers like
that, it doesn't seem that interesting from a tech point of view.

~~~
qq66
The tech point of view is the most interesting! They made a reprogrammable
credit card that's the same thickness as a credit card. That's impressive tech
whatever your opinion of the utility.

~~~
aeturnum
I agree their fab process is probably quite interesting!

------
Aradalf
This is a stupid article. Phone paying systems are clunky. I don't want to
take out my phone, unlock it, open up an app, enter a PIN, choose a payment
device, and then tap my phone to a payment system to pay, when I can just open
up my wallet, take out this one card, and swipe it. Maybe you need to press
the button a couple times to switch cards, but that's it.

------
drakaal
I know the OnlyCoin guys, so maybe I am biased, but for me this is about
reducing the risk that I don't have a card, or that I leave a card behind.

Combine this with the "you can't sniff my card through my pocket" capabilities
and I am very excited.

This is just a troll post by someone who either doesn't understand, or has
sour grapes.

------
kayoone
It might be a step in the wrong direction, but why not let them try ?

In todays world evolution isn't linear, its parallel. Many people work on
similar problems at the same time (innovators dilemma comes to mind) and some
may prevail, some won't. But thats the process of moving forward to the
perfect solution.

------
hakcermani
The easy first step to eliminating cards is to consolidate them into one
device. Then make them completely swipe free etc. Square is doing something
similar. Invent a small device to handle swipes and then move to Square
Wallet. IMO Coin is on to something !

------
briancray
The infrastructure for plastic cards will be around for a very long time. I
think the author is ignoring the very expensive need for infrastructure
changes. It's the same reason why everyone isn't driving around electric cars.

------
badman_ting
Maybe. I am more undecided. The thing is totally cool, but I agree about the
increased failure points which is why I won't get one. But, if it turns out to
work pretty well for people after a while, why not consider t?

------
retr0h
This looks like the perfect tool for counterfeiting credit cards. Pay my bill
at the restaurant, in about 20 seconds, the server can have my card ready for
action on their coin.

------
mcallan83
I wonder how this will work at places that require a card to be signed. On the
back of my cards, it says "Not Valid Without Authorized Signature".

------
ryanckulp
My writeup, echo's that it won't be the final solution but with a different
angle (as a stopgap): ryanckulp.com/band-aid-markets

------
dataminded
This makes my wallet thinner. This requires no changes from existing merchants
or their infrastructure. I approve.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Totally over engineered insecure solution, for already oudated technology.
Sounds like a great thing to invest on.

------
zbinga
Today I learned that Americans still swipe their credit and debit cards in a
magnetic strip reader.

------
Nursie
I don't hate Coin.

I do find it astounding that magnetic cards are still the standard in the US
though.

------
huangc10
there's one thing I generally agree with the article. Coin is a gimmick. Also,
I'm sure there are a lot of people like me who like to carry wallets that are
moderately full rather than empty.

------
weixiyen
Wow this is my first time hearing about this. Amazing product...

------
shadowOfShadow
Where's the meme picture with some guy laughing as credit cards fall all over
him... "What am I going to do with all this access to money???"

I'm just going to carry my bitcoin mining rig everywhere - suckers.

------
KamiCrit
Would you like a faster horse or a horseless carriage?

------
alexnking
Somebody better call Kickstarter...

------
streblo
> It stores data in plain text on your card

So does your credit card

~~~
fletchowns
Yea but my credit card doesn't have a wireless radio built into it

~~~
dylanpyle
As far as I can tell, the BLE radio in Coin is _only_ used for detecting
location, and doesn't expose any card details in any form.

~~~
fletchowns
Yea but it's still a wireless radio. Who knows what sort of exploit some
malicious and clever person could come up with.

~~~
goshx
IMO, if we worry about that we would never use NFC or any other technology,
really. I dare to say that everything is exploitable.

~~~
fletchowns
No, we should just always be careful with new technology.

