Cool idea.
Needs chip support for Canada and perhaps the rest of the world.
Coin
131–140 of 720 posts
Re: Coin
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the FAQ: "As an additional safeguard, the Coin app will only allow you to add cards you own." So it sounds like if the name doesn't match, it won't work (you have to take a picture of the front).
Except that names aren't required to match on credit cards. For instance, my wife is an authorized user on my card. Her signature is on the back, my name is on the front. Similar situations abound for business use cards.
That's strange. My girlfriend is an authorized user on my card in Canada and it has her name on the front and she has her own PIN that I don't know.
Re: Coin
#133There are some theft and risk concentration concerns, along with potential feature problems (accidental card selection change), but this would be great for credit cards rewards hacking- a lot of cards have different bonus areas.. 3x-5x points/cash back on different categories, like dining, gas, groceries, travel expenses, specific department stores, etc. This would easily allow you to maximize your rewards without having to carry around all the different cards. 2x-4x extra back means this will pay for itself pretty easily.
Re: Coin
#134I 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…
From the looks of it, it will handle rewards cards and whatnot just fine. If I could just store my Qdoba, Panera, Gameworks, Dave and Busters, REI, Best Buy, Safeway, Kroger, etc. cards on one single card. Now I can keep as many rewards cards as I want, without having to stuff my wallet full of junk I don't need 99% of the time. The money I save from rewards cards I wouldn't normally carry would probably pay for the…
Every rewards card I have is a scanned barcode, not a mag swipe.
Re: Coin
#135So I have to turn this over to a bartender to keep behind the bar when I go out and drink? If I forget to grab it before I take a cab, now I'm out $100 and ALL of my credit cards. No thanks.
Is that system still popular? I've started lots of tabs in the last few years, and it's always been purely an oral conversation - they only get my card at the end when I'm settling up.
Still happens quite a bit here in Chicago, they'll take your card and sometimes your ID when starting a tab.
Re: Coin
#136It's fantastic to see Android support right off the bat!
Re: Coin
#137Swipe, click-to-switch, swipe, click-to-switch, swipe... Why steal one card's data when you can copy the whole wallet? :-) Or, run one card but take down the information for another.
It also appears that the Coin is programmed over Bluetooth. Why bother swiping to steal when you can run a smartphone app and take all of the cards on all of the coins in range?
If this takes off and fraud goes up, credit card companies will drop the discount vendors currently get by swiping. Maybe vendors that currently swipe will start entering CVVs? Will Coin then start storing CVVs per card?
Vendors might refuse to accept Coin in the first place (there's already a comment here from one who won't). Or credit card companies will have Coin outlawed as a counterfeiting tool. I can see how this seems like a good idea, but I don't think it will work out.
Re: Coin
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've misread what I wrote. It might be able to handle rewards cards, but the card itself becomes a bottleneck because it can only function as one card at a time. I'd have to select the rewards card, have that swiped, then fumble with the card again to select my payment card and proceed to pay. It seems like a ghastly hassle. If I had this I could see myself using this for rewards cards only. But then again,…
Your fears sound irrational to me. It's just a button, on something already in your hand. I doubt you're going to "fumble" it, or that it's going to be a "ghastly hassle" to press a button one or more times. Once you've shopped at that store at least once, you know exactly how many times to press it to advance to the card you use there. All of this should take less time than putting a rewards card back into your wall…
When I think about standing in line pressing a button, iterating through a list of all my credit, debit, and rewards cards to find the right one, it seems like a hassle. Imagine I go past the correct card in my haste and I've got to keep pressing the button until I've looped back around to the correct one. Did I screw it up a third time? Now people in line behind me and the cashier are getting pissed off with how much time I'm taking. Oh wait, that was just for the rewards card and now I have to select the payment cards? I'd be regretting my mistake and wishing I could just pull a card out of my wallet.
Looking in my wallet to pick the silver card on the middle right and the brown card on the top left is so much easier. People can pick out location and color far faster because of our evolutionary history.
Re: Coin
#139This is very cool technology but I'm skeptical for its practical usage. Lots of people have already brought up the obvious pitfalls (atm use, accidental presses, banks potentially removing card liability) but I'd also probably carry around my important cards in my wallet just in case. So they aren't really solving the problem of carrying too many cards - at least for me.
It would be useful for things like gift cards and reward cards - but is it worth it for that?
Re: Coin
#140With any luck, this will piss off the banks/CC companies enough to finally roll out chip+pin in the US.
It's already on the way.