One of my biggest questions/objections is about the battery life issue. They claim that this will run out juice every 2 years or so and that the battery cannot be replaced, so I'll just need to buy a new one. $100 every two years for this device seems like a pretty big expense, as opposed to $100 one time.
Coin
81–90 of 720 posts
Re: Coin
#82What happens when the waiter accidentally clicks the button & charges your business card when it should have charged your personal card? I guess they can just peruse your cards, see what you've got, and pick which one to charge. :p
Presumably when the card is away from your phone (and BT connectivity), it would disable the button on the card. Or you could lock it into selecting that card via the phone.
Re: Coin
#83I wonder how this would fare in an ATM. What happens if the ATM accidentally presses the card selection button? If the ATM gobbles the card, now you've effectively lost your entire wallet. What happens if the cashier presses the card selection button while running your card too? Oops, now your boss wants to know why you've just paid for your groceries on the business credit card and why you've cloned your business cr…
I agree - I don't see the comments here as Hater News, but rather the exact sort of questions pretty much any consumer or business user would ask. There's a glint of "oh this is useful" and then there's the "oh, but what about this... and that...". That's not Hater News - that's pretty much exactly what any non-technical person would inquire about this product.
I agree. Perhaps I was really just promulgating the Critical Thinking News stereotype instead! I actually love to see progress, especially if something would really make my life better, even in a small way, but I really don't feel like this is going to be worth it.
Re: Coin
#84How would you prevent mass credit card theft in this case? Couldn't an unscrupulous person, say a waiter at a restaurant, take your card, use his/her own Coin to make a copy of your card, add it to their own Coin, and then use that card at their leisure at a future date? I know, the same question was asked re: Square and the like, but the difference is that you need a Square account to steal other people's cards, and…
You can already steal credit cards really easily. When you hand your card to the waiter, there are machines that will save that number and you can write it to a blank card easily. They can also jot down your security number. This might make it marginally easier, but it is on one service and tracked.
Re: Coin
#85They need to fix their closed captioning.
Re: Coin
#86What happens when the waiter accidentally clicks the button & charges your business card when it should have charged your personal card? I guess they can just peruse your cards, see what you've got, and pick which one to charge. :p
Perhaps when the card is away from the phone you can't push the button? Not sure, but this is definitely my top-of-mind question.
Re: Coin
#87How would you prevent mass credit card theft in this case? Couldn't an unscrupulous person, say a waiter at a restaurant, take your card, use his/her own Coin to make a copy of your card, add it to their own Coin, and then use that card at their leisure at a future date? I know, the same question was asked re: Square and the like, but the difference is that you need a Square account to steal other people's cards, and…
Credit card theft like you describe is already possible and already happens
This makes it less suspicious. Traditionally a lot of small-time (i.e. Vegas) skimmers write mag-stripes onto other cards ranging from hotel key-cards to expired credit cards, but in places where skimming is common gas attendants and cashiers are trained to watch out for warning signs including lots of expired cards, trying lots of cards, name on computer doesn't match name on card, and especially hotel keycards at gas stations.
This device defeats all these human security measures by letting me use a startup bling device to try up to 8 cards at once without looking suspicious at all. "Declined? shit, my newfangled e-bling card must have messed up - try it again!" (while silently changing cards using the button). "No name on the card? Card isn't signed? You want my ID? But this is the hottest new toy! Promise it's fine!"
Re: Coin
#88What happens when the waiter accidentally clicks the button & charges your business card when it should have charged your personal card? I guess they can just peruse your cards, see what you've got, and pick which one to charge. :p
Needs TouchID just for that!
Re: Coin
#89I wonder how this would fare in an ATM. What happens if the ATM accidentally presses the card selection button? If the ATM gobbles the card, now you've effectively lost your entire wallet. What happens if the cashier presses the card selection button while running your card too? Oops, now your boss wants to know why you've just paid for your groceries on the business credit card and why you've cloned your business cr…
The first bit has to be the simplest thing to fix: just require the user to hold it to lock/unlock or some particular sequence of presses.
That sounds more complicated than pulling a card out of my wallet that I've instantly identified by position and color -- something the human brain is really good at doing without much thought. It's far more of a cognitive burden to fumble through a voodoo incantation of keypresses at the register to make the wizard card clone the correct card.
Re: Coin
#90I'm not sure of the prevalence in the US, but does this support chip + pin transactions? They're the standard in the UK now, and I suspect it's a little harder to mess around with than the magnetic strip.
I understand chip+pin is still a novelty in the US. Back in 2009, I was (apparently) the first person to use the chip+pin machine in one of the biggest bookstores in Toronto - the cashiers got excited and all gathered round to watch. It was a little bit bizarre.
It's totally standard in Canada now. Usually when a place doesn't take chips it's a US-owned chain.