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Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

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Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#71
post #27
post #23

This seems a great way to steal other people's credit cards. You can literally duplicate someone's card on your "coin". Now there's a super easy way for someone working in a restaurant to get your credit card information and sell it.

Couldn't they just require the name/address to match for all cards? Including the one you used to pay for the device?

The FAQ says that they do indeed require the names to match.

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#72
Something not answered by the FAQ: when the battery starts to die, do you get some kind of a warning? If so, great. If not, I'd be worried that one day my battery would die without warning while I'm out of town and I'd be stuck without access to any of my cards.

Of course I could mitigate this by carrying my cards with me, but that kind of defeats the point, right?

I suppose I could also replace it after two years like they suggest in the FAQ. But at $100 a pop I'd like to get as much use as possible out of it. And from the usage numbers they cite for the 2-year estimate, it sounds like you could probably get well over 2 years of battery life in practice.

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#73

This product is overly restricting it's market, I feel, since in Europe EMV (or "chip and PIN" as it's known in the UK) is ubiquitous. Payments worldwide are moving over to this system from magnetic strip cards, so I fear that this (useful) product has been invented too late once the tech it relies on is already speedily in decline! I imagine, due to how the cryptography works, it might not be as simple to create a p…

It appears that they plan to do EMV in the future. This is rather scary, since you're trusting their hardware, and probably your phone, with the private key in your chip card.

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I really want to have a reprogrammable CC that I hand to a waiter NOT - Why not just have the fed mandate Chip and Pin after a certain date like Europe did.

Because it's not worth the cost. On the consumer side, chargebacks are easy. Credit card companies bear the brunt of the cost of fraud. They all have the incentive in the world to start rolling out chip and pin technology. The fact that they haven't probably demonstrates that the math doesn't work out.

It's actually the end merchant (seller) that bears the cost of fraud. So credit card companies have little incentive to fix this, beyond customer support costs.

Say you sell a camera to someone using a stolen credit card.

The real owner of the card gets his money back after doing a chargeback. The thief keeps the camera. The merchant loses a camera, the money, and gets a ding in his credit card merchant reputation.

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#75
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier than pen and paper? Or the camera on their phone?

I assume it's easier in the sense that your waiter could add your card to his Coin, then immediately go buy a TV at the store with it. Not having to make a fake card or needing the address of the card holder to use it online.

As with some other people in cousins comments to your post, I think you may not realize that that attack is already perfectly feasible today. By "feasible" I mean real criminals already do this today, not merely that some academics hypothesize that it may be possible. It's all very off-the-shelf stuff. If you're worried about this attack, the solution isn't "don't use Coin someday in the future", it's "don't use anything with a magnetic strip, today".

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#79
I have mixed opinions on this - it feels like a cosmetic solution to a somewhat non-problem.

Would I carry it?

As of yet - no, I would rather use iphone apps etc.

The other problem that it misses is the show that people like to make of using a certain card.

I have an amex platinum for business purposes, but I still get a bit of thrill every time I use it and I get a look, how does Coin approach that problem?

Re: Meet Coin (YC W13), a startup creating a universal credit card

#80

A lot of places ID you when you use a card. I wonder how that would work. I don't see a name on it.

Requiring ID is against the rules of every major card network; so are things like adding surcharges, and having minimum transaction amounts. Think about it, anything that adds friction to using a card makes it more likely you might use cash, eating into the card network's revenues. Anything that does that is likely to be frowned upon or prohibited. Report merchants that do that. For Visa, call your card issuer. For A…

I believe that as of January 2013 you can now legally[1]:

1. Add a surcharge for credit card payments. 2. Have a minimum of up to $10 to use a credit card.

See: http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/27/pf/checkout-fee/

[1] Not that it was ever illegal, only against the CC company rules. But now the law explicitly forces CC companies to allow it.

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