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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

#131

Post by ascorbic »

recursive wrote: post #70
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, I cannot remember PINs. At all. That means I can never use debit cards. If chip and pin were a thing, I guess I would have to get a tattoo or something.

It's a four digit number! How hard can they be? Set it to something memorable. Even something "insecure" like a memorable date is more secure than a signature.

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

#132

Post by douche »

ascorbic wrote: post #131
recursive wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I cannot remember PINs. At all. That means I can never use debit cards. If chip and pin were a thing, I guess I would have to get a tattoo or something.

It's a four digit number! How hard can they be? Set it to something memorable. Even something "insecure" like a memorable date is more secure than a signature.

If two letters of my credit card signature are distinguishable, that means I was focusing hard on it. It's basically just a squiggle.

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

#133

Post by abalone »

hocuspocus wrote: post #63
abalone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't know what was promised by Plastc exactly but I assume you need to register your card numbers somewhere (like with Apple Pay) and then when you use your Plastc card to pay (with chip and PIN or not), their back-end issues a payment transaction using the selected card. Am I wrong? Over here in Europe we have Curve that does exactly that, without the fancy hardware: https://www.imaginecurve.com

Curve has its own card number. The closest thing to Curve here was a card called Wallaby. It somehow redirected charges from one card to another... I think they were getting creative with the processing rules and got shot down. Not sure how Curve does it exactly but I'm skeptical of their long term viability. Either they're similarly creative or they are acting like a merchant and recharging every transaction and eating some interchange. Maybe they get away with that more in Europe where interchange is low but it's still a net loss.

Anyway Plastc was about trying to actually emulate a card. All this has been leapfrogged by Apple and Samsung Pay.

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

#134

Post by ricardobeat »

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…

> Given the shift to chip-and-PIN, which can't be emulated like this

I don't know the tech behind it but this Dutch startup is doing exactly that: https://www.bunq.com/en/

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

#135

Post by abalone »

schoen wrote: post #67
abalone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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) If they'd had a whole lot of market share already, maybe they could have persuaded issuers to provide private keys in some way that could be imported into the Plastc device (which might itself then have a tamper-resistant smartcard processor like the one in the individu…

Horrible security and wouldn't work for the most secure chip and PIN cards which never share their private key. Apple Pay's approach is better: issuer assigns a unique number to the device along with its own authentication scheme, rather than trying to emulate another.

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

#136

Post by abalone »

bigiain wrote: post #83
thecosas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://squareup.com/townsquare/why-are-chip-cards-more-secu... "To rip it off, someone would have to get into the physical chip circuit and manipulate things to get your bank information. Not only is this level of data surgery really difficult, but it also requires a set of high-tech equipment that can cost north of $1 million."

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"...

Great point. So for Plastc to work, all you'd have to do is mail in your card so they can treat it with acid and run it through a scanning transmission electron microscope, destroying it in the process.

I have no idea why they went under.

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

#137

Post by hocuspocus »

X-Istence wrote: post #82
hocuspocus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what was promised by Plastc exactly but I assume you need to register your card numbers somewhere (like with Apple Pay) and then when you use your Plastc card to pay (with chip and PIN or not), their back-end issues a payment transaction using the selected card. Am I wrong? Over here in Europe we have Curve that does exactly that, without the fancy hardware: https://www.imaginecurve.com

Yes, that is not what Plastc was. Plastc was like copying the data from the front of your card and displaying it on a different one (mag-strip included).

Got it. EMV is clearly an issue then, I see the problem.

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

#138

Post by hocuspocus »

abalone wrote: post #133
hocuspocus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what was promised by Plastc exactly but I assume you need to register your card numbers somewhere (like with Apple Pay) and then when you use your Plastc card to pay (with chip and PIN or not), their back-end issues a payment transaction using the selected card. Am I wrong? Over here in Europe we have Curve that does exactly that, without the fancy hardware: https://www.imaginecurve.com

Curve has its own card number. The closest thing to Curve here was a card called Wallaby. It somehow redirected charges from one card to another... I think they were getting creative with the processing rules and got shot down. Not sure how Curve does it exactly but I'm skeptical of their long term viability. Either they're similarly creative or they are acting like a merchant and recharging every transaction and eat…

As far as I understand, Curve is viable due to the fact they issue corporate cards (you can see "for commercial use only" on their cards).

Europe has capped interchange fees to 0.2% and 0.3% for debit and credit cards respectively. However, three-party schemes (like Amex) and corporate cards are exempt and charge more. But you're right, I'm not sure how MasterCard is happy with that (since the product is clearly targeted at consumers).

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

#139

Post by ascorbic »

douche wrote: post #132
ascorbic wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a four digit number! How hard can they be? Set it to something memorable. Even something "insecure" like a memorable date is more secure than a signature.

If two letters of my credit card signature are distinguishable, that means I was focusing hard on it. It's basically just a squiggle.

How often do they even check it though? And of those times, how often would they refuse it? I know that pre-chip and PIN in the UK I had a card for years where the signature strip had been rubbed off, and I was never challenged on it. When I've visited the US they've also very rarely checked.

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

#140

Post by pjc50 »

icelancer wrote: post #89
vkou wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are alternatives to what they've done. They could have opted to not use the pre-order money to fund their operations (Until more funding could be secured). They could have protected it, as soon as they realized that they are in deep financial trouble. Compare this story to that of Lily - where when the party ended, it seems like the company has plans to give customers partial refunds. [1] Instead, from all exte…

>They could have opted to not use the pre-order money to fund their operations Exactly. Sequestering pre-order money - at least some fraction of it - should have been one of the first orders of business for any company who cares about integrity.

People talk about this as customers, but: surely the point of pre-order money in many cases is precisely to fund operations - to provide the working capital needed to do manufacturing?

If I have a hardware product that costs $80 to make (x10,000) and I'm selling it on Kickstarter for $100, are you saying that after taking in a million on kickstarter I should just sequester it and then find a spare $800k to do the actual manufacturing?

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