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Coin

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Re: Coin

#411

Post by skadamat »

omegaworks wrote: post #346
fps wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card fraud is generally not a problem in the US for consumers or the credit card companies, the two groups that would be in a position to adopt a new credit card technology. The merchants accept all the liability in the US credit card system, and they're at the mercy of the credit card company's policies, and the consumer's desire to use their card of choice or go somewhere else. As a consumer, I avoid cash-on…

I love cash-only places. You know all your money is going to the hard working people making your sandwich instead of the big four credit card corporations.

Exactly, just more for Uncle Sam. At least credit card companies are re-investing their profits to cut down fraud and try to make money transfer easier in general. Could they be doing more? Of course, but the CC corporations have done a lot of good, even for the little SMB / mom & pop shop. The transaction rates these companies charge is very low, and that's all thanks to the competition that has driven down the price over the years

Re: Coin

#412

Post by busterarm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #334
busterarm wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an AmEx but not Platinum. It's not worth the extra fees to me. If they get some sense and implement this on their lower-end charge cards, I'd be a pig in shit. I try to have this be the only card I use.

The chip is available on all of the Amex charge cards, green through platinum. Just ask customer service for it.

Thought that was all chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-pin.

Chip-and-sig is almost useless.

Also, I'm a stingy bastard with the fabled Unicorn Card (Zync) that's no longer offered. I think any changes would mean a forced upgrade. I'm worried about a forced upgrade when the card expires too.

Re: Coin

#413

Post by wyclif »

tedivm wrote: post #199
nlh wrote: post #167

SUPER clever idea -- kudos for that. In theory, this is awesome. As a consumer, I love it. As a merchant, however (which I am), there is no chance I would accept this. None. Unless the issuers (that is, Visa, MC, Amex) drastically change their policies, which I don't see happening anytime soon. Why? Because the issuers are very clear about a few things: When push comes to shove and it REALLY gets down to it, unless t…

Many credit card companies are starting to issue new cards which are completely flat, making it impossible to make imprint. My new CapitalOne card is an example of this. Is your company planning on refusing to do business with them?

Yes, all mine are completely flat at this point as well. I assume all credit card issuers are rolling this out.

Re: Coin

#414

Post by zymhan »

dakrisht wrote: post #272

It's a neat concept, but I just don't think this gets anywhere. Dead in the water - as much as I would personally like to see them succeed. The biggest problems here are security. () Merchants will hate it since there is no physical imprint / swipe of the bank-issued card. This will lead to chargebacks in favor of the customer. So this alone kills this company/product. () Banks might change their terms forbidding cus…

() Battery issues with digitizing a non-battery product (credit card). Be in no doubt that more than half of users will forget to charge their credit card (as if we don't have enough things to charge). So you'll see people having lunches and presenting a dead Coin. And since you don't have any plastic, well, now you're screwed.

Clearly you didn't read the site. Maybe you should pay more attention to things you criticize.

Re: Coin

#415

Post by toomuchtodo »

busterarm wrote: post #412
toomuchtodo wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chip is available on all of the Amex charge cards, green through platinum. Just ask customer service for it.

Thought that was all chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-pin. Chip-and-sig is almost useless. Also, I'm a stingy bastard with the fabled Unicorn Card (Zync) that's no longer offered. I think any changes would mean a forced upgrade. I'm worried about a forced upgrade when the card expires too.

I'm sorry, yes, all the chips on Amex cards are chip and sig, and are just as useless as you describe.

Re: Coin

#417

Post by PeterisP »

iLoch wrote: post #55
TamDenholm wrote: post #19

I assume that the Chip-and-pin system isnt standard in the US like it is in the UK. Can a similar technology be applied to chips?

I was trying to look into this as well. Apparently the chips cannot be read from in the same way unless you authorize it. I don't know how that authorization process works, but I'm guessing it's possible. I'll be looking out for Coin in the future when they introduce EMV support.

You shouldn't be able to read EMV chips with any authorisation - it's supposed to be safe from bank employees who make the actual cards, so they can't clone your card before giving it to you.

In the EMV process the private key should be unique to the card (if you make a replacement card with the same number, it's a different key); the private key shouldn't exist anywhere outside the chip after the card is made; and there aren't supposed to be any ways to read the key. Well, cutting the chip and scanning with a electron microscope works, but it's impractical.

I'm not saying that there aren't any bugs in the implementation, but I'm quite sure that there are no known bugs that allow simply to get the key; even full control of the HSM which holds the bank's private key should allow you only to make/sign new fake cards, but not recreate an existing card.

Re: Coin

#418

Post by Nursie »

busterarm wrote: post #412
toomuchtodo wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chip is available on all of the Amex charge cards, green through platinum. Just ask customer service for it.

Thought that was all chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-pin. Chip-and-sig is almost useless. Also, I'm a stingy bastard with the fabled Unicorn Card (Zync) that's no longer offered. I think any changes would mean a forced upgrade. I'm worried about a forced upgrade when the card expires too.

Whether chip and sig is accepted in places around europe will probably depend on the software they have, the merchant's agreement with their acquirer, whether it's an unattended terminal and a bunch of other stuff.

Surprised to hear it's next to useless, but not really surprising that it's less useful.

Re: Coin

#419

Post by makomk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #322
liyanchang wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chase Sapphire Preferred offers EMV cards[0] and no foriegn exchange charges. Makes a good travel card. [0] Technically: chip-and-signature rather then chip-and-pin. Also, you have to ask for the EMV but they're super friendly about it.

I've found my chip and signature Amex Platinum Card to be just as useless in Europe as my old magstrip-only card.

That's surprising; chip and signature exists in part for accessibility reasons and everywhere is meant to accept them.

Re: Coin

#420

Post by bdamm »

Nursie wrote: post #321
freshhawk wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I Canadian I also read this with a little sadness. It's something I have always wanted ... but now someone made it just as we're close to finishing the transition to EMV. It can actually be a bit tricky to use my company card to buy lunch at restaurants sometimes because "there's no chip". Their FAQ says future versions of Coin will support EMV, but I'm not familiar enough with the hardware to know how difficult t…

The EMV transaction process has "application selection" as one of its early stages, and some cards do contain multiple applications. However AFAICT this is never across banks or across schemes. So you may get a card that has (say) a Mastercard application on it for domestic use and another for foreign use. In theory, you could slam mastercard, visa, amex, credit, debit, whatever else you want, all on the one chip. De…

There are three tricks involved with this.

One, you may not be able to download the card app from one card and upload it to another. My GlobalCard fu is not well honed enough to tell you what ADPU you'd need to invoke in order to try, but it goes against the goals of the product to allow this anyway.

Two, if a credit card company provides you with an EMV card, it's got a private key loaded into the card, and may have even originally been generated on the card. It is outright not allowed under any circumstance to download that private key and upload it to another chip; that would be a major hole in the scheme.

Three, not all banks use the same crypto. Even if they all agreed to a single kind of crypto operation, different EMV chips have different performance characteristics when carrying out crypto operations. If the bank can't control the actual EMV chip any more, then they cannot control elements of their payments processing (e.g. session closure within a certain time frame). This problem is the easiest to solve of these three problems.

So, unless the banks get on board with allowing their apps and their keys to be provisioned on an already existing card, or provide some kind of proxy mechanism whereby an EMV card can delegate another card to act on its behalf (and imagine the security concerns with that) then this isn't going to happen.

I don't see the benefit to the banks for doing this. You're far more likely to see paypal succeeding in turning your phone into your wallet (and they are doing it) then you are to see Visa or MC allowing you to link multiple EMV cards into one.

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