Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coin: A step in the wrong direction

techendo.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 193 posts

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#161

Post by jebus989 »

Nursie wrote: post #75
jebus989 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of them accept online payments. It's really not a big leap to being able to pay for something through their website while in their store and walk out with it. Some places do this now, especially for bulky items, just scan the barcode in-store and they'll deliver it your house. If I'm carrying a wallet or keys in my pockets in 10 years I'll be pretty disappointed.

From the industry side of this - online payments suffer a lot more fraud and just generally have a worse risk-profile than traditional "customer-present" transactions. Specifically online card payments. Unsure about through other processing facilities.

What about combining online payments and customer-present, serve an intranet over wi-fi?

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#162

Post by sheri »

Coin actually seems like it would be a pain from a usability stand-point. Say I actually put in lots of my cards in there. Now, I go to Safeway, I need to first keep clicking until I reach my rewards card. Then, I need to keep clicking again until I reach my credit card. If I accidentally click ahead, I'd need to loop over all my cards again.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#163

Post by vidarh »

RandallBrown wrote: post #151
unreal37 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, how about "many merchants won't accept it". Or "the battery runs out after 1 year."

As far as I know, neither of those things are true. Many merchants I swipe my own card and they never see it. A waitress may question it, but I have no reason to believe they won't accept it if it is validated by their card reader. The website says the battery should last two years.

When I first moved to the UK, you should have seen the hassle I had to go through to pay with my Norwegian VISA debit card. Norwegian debit cards have a portion of them that looks like an ID card, with photo and birth date. While they did accept it in the end, several places thought I was trying to pay with my passport or ID card, despite the obvious VISA logo.

Given that, I'd very much hesitate to try to pay with something that clearly isn't the original card. (Of course, I won't be able to anyway, since I'm outside the US, and every single one of my cards these days are chip and pin cards)

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#164

Post by andyhmltn »

Semaphor wrote: post #51
samuelkadolph wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this is very much illegal. You cannot charge someone for a product and then not deliver it. Kickstarter doesn't charge you for a product, you pledge or donate to a project on Kickstarter and if it's successful, you get the item(s) for the level you pledged to for free.

So there is a part where the US has stronger consumer protection laws than Germany? Interesting. Besides that, why are digital goods pre-orders seemingly allowed?

If you're referring to stuff like iTunes then pre-orders, you aren't actually charged until the day it releases

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#165

Post by vidarh »

devindotcom wrote: post #98
brettgoldstein3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the "old crusty infrastructure" in this case the credit card itself? It seems ridiculous to try to kill the credit card with... a credit card. I wouldn't be surprised if Clinkle, LoopPay, Square, or any of the many startups in this space kills the credit card (and thus Coin) before Coin makes its first delivery in Summer 2014.

Square, which is a point-of-sale system? Two other things, which the billions of people who use credit cards every day have never heard of? What would constitute "killing" the credit card, anyway? Less than 5% of the population using it? I don't see that happening for a good 15 or 20 years at a bare minimum.

Do keep in mind, though, that of the "billions of people" who use credit cards, the number that use cards that can be cloned by reading the magnetic stripe is fast dwindling. Until/unless Coin gets cosy enough with the card associations to the point where they can get some way of cloning chip and pin cards (EMV), they're DOA in a quickly rising list of countries that already covers the majority of the developed world.

And a large part of the point of chip and pin cards is that they're meant to be impossible to clone. E.g. in France it supposedly cut card fraud by about 80% for in-person transactions. So unless Coin can convince them that it will be as secure or more secure than these cards, they're going to be pretty much limited to the US, and increasingly get marginalised in the US too: Most large US banks have announced rollout plans for EMV cards (though many will be chip + signature rather than chip + pin).

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#166

Post by vidarh »

cypher543 wrote: post #60
stormbrew wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the 'hate' is coming from places (eg. Canada) that have already moved on to chip cards (which won't and probably can't work with this) and are now slowly moving on to nfc. It's just already late for this kind of development. 5 years ago? I'd have been all over this. Now? I'm just waiting for Apple to adopt NFC so we can all move forward on better solutions.

Their FAQ says that future versions will support chip cards. https://onlycoin.com/support/faq/

Consider this: The incentive for the banks in using chip and pin cards is that they are supposed to be near impossible to clone, and thus there is a "liability inversion": Unlike with mag-stripe + signature cards, with EMV cards, the assumption is that if the pin was used, the customer is liable. With some exceptions.

Couple that with massively reduced fraud.

Now, if they allow a method for cloning these cards, both of those go out the window: Criminals will just attack the weakest point, which is going to be whatever mechanism Coin would use to allow cards to get added to their device.

As for the US market: Consider that pretty much all large US banks have committed to start rolling out EMV cards (though many will roll out chip + signature rather than chip + pin, which seems the height of stupidity)

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#167

Post by andrewaylett »

xtracto wrote: post #146
bitops wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: you are asking how a negative, critical, "this is stupid" article made it to the top of Hacker News?

I think this is a good sign for the Coin creators. IIRC Dropbox and AirBnB had similar negative buzz when they were announced. The YCombinator forum seems to like to bash implementation of ideas, specially by throwing other ideas which in theory are better (ideas are dime a dozen anyways).

They also bashed Color.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#168

Post by vidarh »

mortehu wrote: post #137
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>cashiers have never so much as glanced at my cards Depends on where you shop. Some stores (particularly big box stores -- Best Buy comes to mind) always ask to see the card and ID. If they do, it's a showstopper for it to not be real. There's NO WAY a store with that policy would let you buy something with an anonymous black "card". Not only does this scream "FRAUD!", it almost certainly WILL be used for fraud, almo…

> Some stores (particularly big box stores -- Best Buy comes to mind) always ask to see the card and ID It seems odd that big stores would require this, since this is explicitly forbidden in the merchant agreements. Also, I've never experienced this myself in the US. 1. http://www.mastercard.us/support/problems-using-mastercard.h... "A merchant must not refuse to complete a transaction solely because a cardholder ref…

"solely" being the key word here that allows them to get away with pretty much whatever they want by claiming the reason they insisted on id was that that something else caused suspicion.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#169

Post by sdoering »

mrab wrote: post #120
Schwolop wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an enormous headache. I am very glad to sacrifice 5% of my $10 000/yr grocery bill to not have that headache. $500/yr to not have to listen to anyone telling me how I can save a few more cents? Priceless - no wait, not even priceless, only $500/yr!

Rewards are transparent. Spend some money and before you know it, you get a $100 check or gas cards or amazon credit etc. What a headache!!! I hate it when people give me money for free!

For free? Really? No, people give you money, as they are building a great big database of your consuming-behavior. Not only what you buy, but when, where, in which quantities, what goes together with what, and so on.

That is the currency, that you do pay for these "perks".

Post reply on HN