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Well if you're not even going to even bother spending 30 seconds to read the whole article, please spare us your invaluable contribution to the discussion of it.
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Coin: A step in the wrong direction
11–20 of 193 posts
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#12Coin is a great step forwards for consolidation, and it will probably make future post-credit-card technologies more palatable. In that vein alone it's a win.
That said, there's lots of reasons to be worried about Coin from a security perspective. But, at least in the US, consumers bear few of the penalties and costs associated with fraud -- only the credit card companies and banks do. So we will likely see significant adoption from savvy consumers and some resistance (or outright revolt?) from CC companies and banks.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#13By his logic wouldn't Kickstarter be illegal? Many KS projects charge users before making a product (they use Amazon to process the payment, but the user's credit card is still charged, which may very well be a Visa). I think this is a little silly.
In Finland, crowdfunding concepts are actually illegal for that reason.
If you're collecting money without selling something, you need a license from the authorities. To get a license, you need to be a registered charity.
You can't just say "we'll probably use your donation to build something you might like and may send you one when it's ready".
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#14By his logic wouldn't Kickstarter be illegal? Many KS projects charge users before making a product (they use Amazon to process the payment, but the user's credit card is still charged, which may very well be a Visa). I think this is a little silly.
I mentioned a reply to that as a parent above. The difference is the way Kickstarter presents the projects and the terminology they use. They are not asking for pre-orders, they are asking for pledges, and have a very clear disclaimer in the top right about what that means. If the product page itself were to claim that they were pre-orders for a product that couldn't ship yet, then it as well could potentially be violating card agreements as well as the rule from the FTC.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#15>> Visa requires that merchants ship a product prior to charging any Visa debit card
This is very new to me. This source here: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance-guide...
States:
>> You should not bill the customer until merchandise has been shipped
That is a best practice, not a requirement.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#16Two issues with Coin. One is this has been done before, exact same approach, and it did not work out because the card issuers didn't buy in (a credit card is also part of the issuing bank's brand). Maybe that's changed in the past few years, but I am skeptical.
The second issue is it's solving a problem that isn't really a problem. I use two cards on a regular basis. I have others but rarely need to carry them with me. So I can reduce two slots in my wallet to one. Doesn't seem like enough of a benefit to me.
Lastly, I can see all sorts of issues with merchants not knowing what these are, and being wary of accepting them due to perceived fraud risk. Something that reprograms its mag stripe practically yells "FRAUD!".
So I appreciate the technical innovation behind this, but I think they're likely to get dashed upon the rocks. It's a tough space. I thought Google Wallet with Android NFC would be super convenient. It wasn't. I went back to the old fashioned swipe. So its hard to see this catching on with ordinary consumers.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#17For everyone who is poo-pooing Coin because it's not a digital wallet, please answer this question: How long from now will most merchants that accept credit cards also start accepting an e-wallet of some sort?
I honestly would be stunned if this happened in <10 years. I think we very often underestimate how slow adoption rate is for new technology and how much money can be made by playing nice with the incumbent technology instead of trying to disrupt it from the onset.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#18I dislike this article: it seems to suffer from 'perfect is the enemy of good'-itis and willful misunderstanding of how complex -- and difficult -- commerce can be. The author basically argues that things should be wonderful and easy and the service providers should handle it all (ignoring the difficulties of such a provision): I should use a plastic card, cheap, easily replaceable, low cost (free in most cases), and…
Agree completely. How did this manage to bubble up to the top of HN?
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#19> It stores data in plain text on your card So does your credit card
Yea but my credit card doesn't have a wireless radio built into it
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#20Coin folks, please, for the love of god, ignore these people.