Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

plastc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 168 posts

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#31

Post by Nition »

vkou wrote: post #28
halfcheck wrote: post #15

My favorite part about this is that they created a webpage that essentially called out Coin for selling out, and that they'd give you a discount if you traded your Coin in. At least Coin was able to deliver some semblance of a product, whereas Plastc was only able to deliver a blog post. https://plastc.com/coinbuyback/

For the sake of posterity: "Flip Your Coin For A $50 Discount Coin has been acquired and is now defunct. Or in other words, they sold you out. Don’t worry, Plastc’s got your back. We’re giving you the opportunity to trade-up your extinct card for $50 off a Plastc Card pre-order. Looks like you’re back in business! Flip your Coin Enter your email below and click “Trade-Up” Instantly receive a $50 discount when you pla…

Hi, I'm interested in signing up for your card but I have one question first: When you inevitably abandon the project and take my money, can I expect a detailed blog post about your "incredible journey" or maybe your "amazing bet" to disrupt the market? That's what I really sign up to these things for.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#32

Post by xKingfisher »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #20
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is goi…

My dream for something like this is having everything on one card would let you manage the complexity a lot better.

Having one single interface to pay all bills and see spending breakdowns aggregated across all your cards, recommending the optimal order to pay down cards (if you are going to carry a balance).

Then on top of this, automatic fallback in case one card is declined, new numbers for every online transaction (not tied to a single provider).

You could even layer on top a simple scripting language to choose the card to be used for a given transaction. E.g. Use my rewards card when buying gas, but if I've maxed out the points then use the lowest interest card. Or round robin the cards to spread out the balance.

Or imagine a group outing where everyone can all combine into a single virtual card, with the ability to distribute charges however you want on the back end.

There are a ton of cool possibilities available (albeit very challenging to get right). And in theory, many people have at least 2 cards for redundancy purposes. Add in no fee rewards cards (Target, etc) and it will add up even for non hardcore points collectors.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#33

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

thomnottom wrote: post #17
danso wrote: post #5

FWIW, the thread on Plastc from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8422928 Edit: apparently there is a r/plastc and it declared plastc a scam 7 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Plastc/comments/52or45/due_to_recen... To me it's fascinating how much Plastc seems to have flown under the radar. The initial announcement, and then almost no coverage until today: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pl…

I like that the first comment points out that they would be useless once the chip and pin switch takes place "in a year or so".

Chip & Pin is an interesting beast.

Canada went straight to Chip & Pin, skipping over Chip & Sign. Since credit cards generally didn't have PINs at the time, there was a little work on the part of the issuing banks to assign PINs. One of my cards came with a letter that said "Use the same PIN as you use with your regular bank card", another came with one that said "Here's your new PIN, you can change it at any of our ATMs" (I only have a credit card with this bank). This all happened over 10 years ago.

When I visited the US recently, I used one of my cards and the cashier said "Oh, you're from Canada, you have to enter a PIN" after inserting it into the payment terminal. A payment at Walmart was even easier as the terminal was customer-facing, it worked just like it does in Canada - insert card, verify amount, enter PIN, done.

Clearly the infrastructure is in place, since the transactions all worked, but there seems to be some strange reluctance for the card issuers to actually use it.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#34

Post by Cpoll »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #20
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is goi…

> It's nice to have one card as a backup, and some hardcore churners / points collectors are going to want 5 or 6 cards and use different cards for different categories... but they're real niches, it's not something that a mainstream, mass market consumer is going to want to manage.

I don't think this is the case. I think the average person has several credit cards (and is probably in the red on all of them).

On the other end of the spectrum is the financial-savvy user that also has multiple credit cards: One that gives them a gas discount, one for their Costco membership, one for restaurant cash-back, one for general purpose cash-back, one that waives the foreign currency conversion fee, etc.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#35

Post by xiaodown »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #20
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is goi…

So, for reference, I'm a guy who has multiple cards. I have two debit cards and a credit card.

The credit card is a credit card (and I mostly use it for company purchases that get reimbursed).

The two debit cards correspond to two different checking accounts. I have a "main" checking account that my check gets deposited into, and another account that I use for, mainly, online purchases or recurring subscriptions like netflix or anything where I am worried about card security. I transfer money into the account, then make the purchase, never leaving more than a hundred bucks or so floating in the account. That way, I limit my own pain in the event that someone gets hacked or my card gets leaked online - I'd much rather not be able to pay netflix than not be able to pay rent.

At one point, I also had a home depot card when my wife and I were fixing up our house in preparation to sell it.

I have a wallet that functions effectively as my phone case and wallet in one, and reducing the number of cards I have to carry around to - potentially - drivers' license, one payment card, and clipper card would be fantastic.

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#37

Post by reubensutton »

abalone wrote: post #16
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

> everywhere that accepts cards Given the shift to chip-and-PIN, which can't be emulated like this -- Plastc claimed they could but never demonstrated it (because it's impossible) -- they were way too late to market with this idea even 3 years ago. And if merchants are going to roll out new POS hardware they might as well jump to NFC as it leapfrogs cards on convenience. And security, if your device implements tokeni…

What makes it impossible to emulate?

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#38

Post by egeozcan »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #20
xiaodown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't going to be so much that, as a card that you could put multiple credit cards on, but that still functioned entirely like a credit card - meaning it could be swiped in vending machines, by waitresses, and everywhere that accepts cards, without the need for an apple pay or google pay or whatever NFC payment hardware. It's for people that keep multiple cards in their wallet.

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is goi…

What I don't understand is the need for multiple credit cards. I have a bank card (an EC-card) and I haven't used my credit-card since a month (other than automatic transactions).

Re: Plastc will cease operations and will not fulfill any pre-orders

#39

Post by talmand »

xiaodown wrote: post #35
tacostakohashi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always bemused about this idea that putting multiple credit cards on a single physical card is some great feature that a lot of people want and would pay money for. In my experience, having many credit cards is a complete pain to manage, because for each card you need to monitor the statement, set up the automatic payment (or do it manually), change the address when you move, etc, etc, and no sane person is goi…

So, for reference, I'm a guy who has multiple cards. I have two debit cards and a credit card. The credit card is a credit card (and I mostly use it for company purchases that get reimbursed). The two debit cards correspond to two different checking accounts. I have a "main" checking account that my check gets deposited into, and another account that I use for, mainly, online purchases or recurring subscriptions like…

If you use your main card at a major retail store it has just as much chance of being involved in a hacking incident as the online card.
Post reply on HN