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Re: Coin

#471
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, you can put a large number of payment applications on a single EMV chip already, and a transaction will either use defaults or present you with a choice. Unfortunately cross-bank and cross-scheme cooperation has never been there to the extent that this has been possible so far.

With my new card I always get a dialogue when I pay where I have to choose between something like "direct payment" or "pay in three installments". I suppose that's the kind of applications you're talking about? I didn't know this was possible before (and I don't remember my bank ever telling me about it, not that I really care, but it's a useless step slowing me down). I see it on every terminal I use here in France,…

That's a weird one!

I've been out of the payments game a few years now (going back in on Monday though) but in EMV speak an 'application' is usually something like Visa, or Mastercard or something along those lines. Some cards I looked at in the past had a few on them for local schemes, for instance we had "Switch" cards here in the UK that were the equivalent of "Maestro" in Europe, but were different enough that a lot of UK debit cards had both applications on them.

If "pay in three installments" is a sort-of credit facility provided by your card issuer(?) then I suppose it could be coded as an on-card application. In fact if you wanted to give your customers that choice on every single transaction I can't think of a better way.

Would get damn annoying...

Re: Coin

#472
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…

Related...some stores have started entering the last 4 digits of the credit card into their POS. This will work even if the card is flat and is obviously used to verify that the card number encoded on the mag strip is the same as the one on the face of the card.

If this becomes more widespread coin will have problems.

Re: Coin

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brazilian, I think the US banks are very strange. "Swipe" cards have been phased out years ago - you'd have to try hard to find a bank which will still issue one. Specifically because you can no longer find ATMs which rely solely on the magstripe. Some banks have biometric fingerprint readers (where you put in your hand and it reads multiple fingerprints at the same time) in addition to the PIN code of the debit…

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. You hit on something though; in the U.S. there are tens of thousands of ATM machines all over. They all accept PIN numbers, and I "believe" magnetic-strip as well (not sure if they're doing fancy stuff too with built-in chips or not). It's the standard that everyone uses; debit card and credit cards alike. To change that to support different tech, you'd have to upgrade all of the…

I think here in the UK there was a multi-year phase in. Started with the banks own ATMs, then the machines that smaller businesses loan from banks to take payments, then (when there were enough commercial offerings available) there was a sort of forced date for merchants to make the switch (or take more liability, that was the choice).

I think it took at least 5 years.

So yeah, non-trivial. And if (as it sounds like) the banks in the US have managed to offload most of their fraud problems to everyone else involved in the transaction, then there's probably little incentive.

Re: Coin

#474
post #420
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The technical issues are solvable (by any reasonable issuer bank), but Visa/MC simply prohibit you to put competitors together with their cards.

Want to add some loyalty cards on the same chip? Sure!

Want to combine two different MC products? Sure!

Want to have Mastercard together with Visa or some local card network that we dislike? Nope, we don't want that so we'll not allow you to issue such cards.

Re: Coin

#475
post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The technical issues are solvable (by any reasonable issuer bank), but Visa/MC simply prohibit you to put competitors together with their cards. Want to add some loyalty cards on the same chip? Sure! Want to combine two different MC products? Sure! Want to have Mastercard together with Visa or some local card network that we dislike? Nope, we don't want that so we'll not allow you to issue such cards.

Very true. Forgot about that.

Share branding? Are you CRAZY???

Re: Coin

#476

Can anyone elaborate how the magstripe trick works? That's the only thing that I can't find, and it's kind of the crucial point of the whole project.

[deleted]

Re: Coin

#477
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…

Some POS systems ask the cashier to type in the last 4 digits of the imprinted number on the card, which wouldn't work for this. I also know of several merchants (Hertz was one, a casino was another) that actually runs a card through a scanner and records an image of both the front and back. There are several scenarios where this wouldn't work.

On the other side of it, I love the idea, and the only way to get merchants and card companies to begin changing their policies is for someone to be first through the door. This will not work for all situations at first, but if it proves popular it could easily sway these policies. Imagine some of the possibilities. Just as an example, imagine getting a pre-approved credit card offer in your email, then having the new, swipeable card instantly downloaded to this device after a few verification questions. Credit card companies that worked with Coin could gain an instant competitive advantage in the cut-throat credit card marketing business. This could also revolutionize the loyalty card business.

Re: Coin

#478
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imprint was just an example. You can take a picture of it, view the CVC, etc. No one imprints anymore.

> No one imprints anymore. that's not true at all; have you been outside of any major city in america?

As an avid road fan, I've been in 47 out of 50 states (no Hawaii, Alaska or Vermont) and roadtriped around 50.000 miles, in the course of 7 years.

I've stayed in hundrends of small cities, from Ogalala, NE to Ozona, TX and Oatman, AZ, and used my credit cards for all kinds of purchases, from Kroger and CVS, to outlet stores, gas, local shops, small eateries, fast food places, restaurants etc.

Never had a vendor inprint my card.

Re: Coin

#479
post #181

I think we're all missing a key point here. From reading the FAQ it appears that the application needs access to their servers. That blows my mind. Why should my mobile phone application, responsible for programming a local card via Bluetooth ever need access to the internet? Simply put - it shouldn't. To me, this sounds like a big data play, except in this case the company is getting the user to cover the cost of ac…

I was trying to figure that out too, whether they're making money off the hardware or my data. I found their privacy policy but I am still unsure what they're going for https://onlycoin.com/privacy/

I really think hard about whether these services are really worth forking over that much of my personal data, and as cool as this product is I don't think it's worth it. If vast amounts of my personal data weren't at stake I'd pre-order for sure :(

Re: Coin

#480
I remember the US refusing to rely on foreign technology, hence refusing to issue plastic money with chips.

But this changed after the CIA got their hands on the technology through in-q-tel acquisition of the french company gemplus then world n°1 company in the business. Then cards with chips were coming the US and it was expected for the rest of the world to get backdoors with their US issued chip cards, years later the french government finally bought back control of the company but way too late.

Now that they have the technology, I'm surprised the switch has not happened yet, even more so since cloning and other kind of fraud is quite easy with magstripes (not that it is that much harder with chips, see yescards).

The coin introduced here seems anachronistic to my european eyes which have not seen a card being swiped in the last 30 years and a great opportunity for fraud. Better use than reducing the number of card in a wallet is obviously to charge other people for your expenses by cloning their cards.

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