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

plastc.com

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

#91

Post by inopinatus »

jahnu wrote: post #57
reubensutton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the London transport network you've been able to pay at the barriers with a contactless credit card in the same way as you would use an Oyster card for a couple of years now. It's weird that other transport networks haven't adopted it yet

Such a system has been in use in Singapore for more than 15 years. Vienna does away with all of this fuss by simply doing random checks, issuing on the spot fines for fare evaders, and not having to manage the expense of turnstiles etc.

Neither the ez-link or NETS FlashPay cards are credit cards. The SG trial of contactless credit cards for public transport micropayments kicked off only last month. http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/tap-masterca...

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

#92

Post by joshvm »

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…

I have a Curve card, which is essentially this. I paid for the beta and got a free wallet out of it (a nice Tumi one) and £50 in reward points so overall I've actually profited from it. There isn't a monthly charge (yet). Curve is a prepaid Mastercard that acts as a middle man. You spend, it charges whichever card is currently selected. You get extra benefits like zero fees abroad, cash withdrawals, etc.

There is also a reward program which is OK if you shop at the places where you get points, but it's no different to signing your card up to a cashback program like Quidco. There are a few big names like Boots, Waterstones and B&Q where I go reasonably often. https://www.imaginecurve.com/curve-rewards-web/

The main advantage to me is security. If your card gets stolen, you can revoke it within minutes without worrying about someone having access to your debit card. Because it's linked to the app, you can see immediately when transactions happen. You can do the same with a debit card of course, but it's an added layer of obfuscation.

Originally it was supposed to be an amazing loophole for American Express users. You could spend Amex everywhere including on cash withdrawals and rack up points like nobody's business. Then Amex pulled out, so that was a bummer. A lot of people on HeadForPoints got very annoyed and felt like they'd been suckered in. To be fair to Curve, they compensated everyone.

I believe you can still use it to withdraw cash on credit cards though, so there's still a way to manufacture points spend.

I use mine daily and while it's fine 95% of the time, there have been sporadic occasions where it's been declined. You can't use it at pay-at-pump petrol stations, for instance. It's not reliable enough yet that I can go around with only a single card in my wallet (which sort of ruins the idea of it). It's really useful for traveling abroad though.

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

#93

Post by mrbabbage »

srssays wrote: post #62
jahnu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a system has been in use in Singapore for more than 15 years. Vienna does away with all of this fuss by simply doing random checks, issuing on the spot fines for fare evaders, and not having to manage the expense of turnstiles etc.

How do you pay for tickets in Vienna then? I kind of like the barriers, if you are on the station platform, then you have definitely paid. For me, the stations that don't have barriers are more stressful, as you run the risk of forgetting to tap your card (or the tap not registering) and incurring a maximum fare.

Berlin has a similar proof-of-payment system, where there are no physical barriers between the street and train platforms. Most people have multi use tickets; you can buy week, month, or year long tickets.

I definitely prefer the proof-of-payment setup more. London (which has turnstiles) can get crazy backups with people trying to tap into / out of the system, and the Berlin system lets you engineer more convenient and therefore customer-friendly stations -- no need for mezzanines, paid vs free elevators, and the like.

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

#94

Post by beedogs »

vkou wrote: post #7

"In 2011 after buying a pair of sneakers, then a fruit smoothie and noticing a Google Wallet icon on the cash register, Marquis asked the cashier how many people actually paid with their phones. The cashier responded that so far 2-3 people per month were using it... Immediately the lightbulb went on in Ryan’s mind that there was a significant shift happening in the market from a physical credit card to digital paymen…

I don't think I'm wrong in the observation that Silicon Valley hasn't really produced anything notable for about a decade now, unless you count grifting lawbreakers like Uber and Airbnb.

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

#95

Post by dominotw »

vkou wrote: post #7

"In 2011 after buying a pair of sneakers, then a fruit smoothie and noticing a Google Wallet icon on the cash register, Marquis asked the cashier how many people actually paid with their phones. The cashier responded that so far 2-3 people per month were using it... Immediately the lightbulb went on in Ryan’s mind that there was a significant shift happening in the market from a physical credit card to digital paymen…

> fruit smoothies

Probably the one with $400 juice press from this morning. What a glorious time.

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

#96

Post by bigiain »

bitexploder wrote: post #90
bigiain wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's presumably " … cost north of $1million in 2016, rumoured to have been done in 2017 by Bunny with $10 worth of decapping acid and a borrowed STEM revealing implementation details and flaws, then with a demonstrated contactless remote exploit working on a RaspberryPi with a $12 USB TV tuner and a hand-wound antenna at CCC or DefCon in 2018"...

So, not $10 if you needed a borrowed, expensive piece of equipment. It is not possible for most of us to jaunt out and borrow a fancy microscope. That only underscores the "expensive equipment required argument". The contactless payment hack is much more practical, though. (Oh you also need far beyond average hardware hacking knowledge and skill, which itself is generally more difficult to acquire and learn ).

Sure - but people _are_ doing this at home with stuff they buy off eBay right now: http://zacsblog.aperturelabs.com/2013/02/decapping-integrate...

And as for "far beyond average hardware hacking skill", I suspect if you got Bunny Huang, Michael Ossmann, and Travis Goodspeed together and curious - this might well be broken in a single weekend! ;-)

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

#97

Post by slededit »

bitexploder wrote: post #90
bigiain wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's presumably " … cost north of $1million in 2016, rumoured to have been done in 2017 by Bunny with $10 worth of decapping acid and a borrowed STEM revealing implementation details and flaws, then with a demonstrated contactless remote exploit working on a RaspberryPi with a $12 USB TV tuner and a hand-wound antenna at CCC or DefCon in 2018"...

So, not $10 if you needed a borrowed, expensive piece of equipment. It is not possible for most of us to jaunt out and borrow a fancy microscope. That only underscores the "expensive equipment required argument". The contactless payment hack is much more practical, though. (Oh you also need far beyond average hardware hacking knowledge and skill, which itself is generally more difficult to acquire and learn ).

They go for about $10k-$30k on EBay. But people have also DIY'd their own: http://makezine.com/2011/03/24/diy-scanning-electron-microsc...

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

#98

Post by tluyben2 »

Unfortunately this is bad for everyone in this market; it (all other players) is a reason we decided not to do preorders but only to take actual orders we can immediately ship out once the product is done and tested. Hardware is hard, especially tiny, bendable hardware meant for daily use under many different, hard to predict circumstances.

Disclaimer: I work on a similar product

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

#100

Post by randrews »

mrbabbage wrote: post #93
srssays wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pay for tickets in Vienna then? I kind of like the barriers, if you are on the station platform, then you have definitely paid. For me, the stations that don't have barriers are more stressful, as you run the risk of forgetting to tap your card (or the tap not registering) and incurring a maximum fare.

Berlin has a similar proof-of-payment system, where there are no physical barriers between the street and train platforms. Most people have multi use tickets; you can buy week, month, or year long tickets. I definitely prefer the proof-of-payment setup more. London (which has turnstiles) can get crazy backups with people trying to tap into / out of the system, and the Berlin system lets you engineer more convenient a…

That's what caused me to get stopped by the police my first day in Berlin a few years ago. I wanted to go to a board game store, so I looked one up on Google in the hotel lobby, walked to a u-bahn station, paid a couple euros for a ticket, walked downstairs and got on a train.

And promptly got pulled off the train at the next stop for not paying.

They were very understanding when I explained I had only been in the country about two hours (and showed my passport stamp as proof). They explained that there are machines to punch holes in the tickets... I did think it was strange that there weren't any turnstiles, but I figured, maybe you run into them on the way out or something (and I had only been in a foreign country two hours, everything was strange).

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