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

171–180 of 193 posts

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#171

Post by yxhuvud »

sliverstorm wrote: post #152
unreal37 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it only works 75% of the time? Let's say you eat a meal, and just when you go to pay, the restaurant looks at this crazy thing and says "no, you can't use that". You have to carry another card with you, or cash to cover any purchase you might make. It's only good if it works as well as credit cards work - 99.9% of places accept them.

Well, sort of. You could always carry this, and a Visa, so you're down from 4 cards to two.

Yes, or you could always carry only the Visa. Works splendid, especially when the VISA is bound to a debit only account.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#172

Post by Semaphor »

andyhmltn wrote: post #164
Semaphor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Steam pre-orders was mainly what I was referring to. I've seen a lot of other pre-orders but I'm not sure they were U.S. based.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#173

Post by zamalek »

This is definitely link bait. Indicate that a YCombinator startup is a waste of time and you are guaranteed to get some hits. Or get upvoted on HN.

> I believe we should be moving away from cards altogether. I think google wallet, square, and other RFID/NFC technologies are thinking about the future, where our devices are consolidated and integrated with the world around us.

That's like, his opinion, man. I personally think that cards are going to be around for a very long time whether we want them to be or not; for one simple reason: infrastructure. There are just too many card readers in the wild to feasibly displace the technology. For example, I can't use Google Wallet in South Africa (even though I would love to be able to) because we simply don't have NFC paypoints here. I doubt there will ever be. Dynamic cards seem like a really clever compromise in the direction of that "perfect world," and when I say "world" I mean it - cards are a world-wide technology. NFC is not.

The author clearly has a problem drawing a line between what is feasible and what he wants. We probably all want NFC payments - the reality is that most of the world won't get them.

If you really think about it all Coin are doing is creating a compatible addon for existing card reader that let you use NFC (or BLE, but the technologies are similar) with any of them.

> Legality of preordering

I am struggling to figure out how exactly this argument means that the cards are a step in the wrong direction. His one commenter (Alec Joy) also points this out:

> For those to lazy, or too trusting of Dan's word to click the link, I would like to present the first sentence of the article he linked to, and suspiciously the ONLY sentence of the response he omitted from his quote. > "It is not illegal for merchants to charge for a product before it has shipped. "

Shameless link baiting.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#175

Post by JohnTHaller »

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.

Any merchant can easily refuse it. They won't know what it is ahead of time. And many merchants have systems where they have to pay a (much) higher fee for certain credit cards (cough AmEx). So, even though they could accept them with their plan, they purposely don't. They don't know what the heck this unbranded thing with no logos are, so they'll just tell you to use something else.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#176

Post by JohnTHaller »

cypher543 wrote: post #28
brianmcconnell wrote: post #16

Two 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 m…

> One is this has been done before, exact same approach, and it did not work out because the card issuers didn't buy in The card issuers don't have to buy in to anything. You program the Coin yourself using your existing cards. > 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. Ah, the o…

> Ah, the old "It's of no use to me, so what's the point?" argument. You're not the person the Coin is targeting. It's for people who have more cards than they can comfortably carry in their wallet.

The thing is, a lot of the people who don't originally see the use to something can wind up using it later on because they have a need for it (DropBox, etc). This has a built-in usefulness limitation in that it is only of use to people with lots of cards that need to carry them all. Sure, I have 6 credit/debit cards, but I only ever carry 2 in my slim front-pocket wallet. I only know 2 people that Coin would apply to for their use-case scenario and neither of them would carry this device instead of their cards.

> I'll admit that I don't shop in many brick and mortar stores, but when I have, the cashiers have never so much as glanced at my cards. Most of the time, the scanner is out of their view anyway. I can see it possibly being a problem if they have to scan it for you (like at a restaurant or something), but I'd be willing to bet that most people just aren't going to care enough to make a fuss about it.

I'd wager that at least 25% of the merchants here in NY would refuse to accept this. Easily at least that many. While many cashiers don't look at your cards when you use them, that's because it still fits the profile of a credit card: thin plastic, bank logo, Visa/MC/Amex logo, magnetic stripe, raised numbers, etc. Giving them something that fits none of these criteria will instantly set off some alarm bells.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#177

Post by jalfresi »

moe wrote: post #138
zacharycohn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Delta AmEx that I use to get miles. This card also has my biggest limit. When people don't take AmEx, I use my older Discover card. This has my second biggest limit and second best rewards. When they don't take that, I use my Chase Visa card, which has a pretty small limit and pretty crappy rewards. I also have my first card, a Capital One Visa card, which I keep around because there's a cool picture on it.…

And how are 4 cards a problem? Honest question. I also have 4 cards. They don't thicken my wallet, they weigh nothing, and.. I never had a problem pulling the one I want on first try. I mean, even in terms of 'first world problems', turning my 4 cards into 1 would never even have occurred to me. Replacing them with a card that will one day make me say "Sorry can't pay, looks like the battery in my CC went flat" seems…

This. Where is the problem here that this solves? Even if you had 8 cards (the limit of Coin), how often does selecting the correct card become a problem, enough to warrant this kind of over complicated, error prone solution?

First world problems indeed! And people claim there isn't a tech bubble, if projects like this get funding...

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#178

Post by InclinedPlane »

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 something has a well-defined shipping date then pre-orders are allowed. This is one reason why you can buy tickets to events well in advance.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#179

Post by Semaphor »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #178
Semaphor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 something has a well-defined shipping date then pre-orders are allowed. This is one reason why you can buy tickets to events well in advance.

Ah, thanks that explains it. Different in Europe though.

Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction

#180

Post by mvkel »

Ironic that this is the same author that praised Square, a technology that brings credit cards to more businesses. He's also not in Coin's target audience. He says himself he only uses two cards. Great! Coin isn't for you.

The technology is here. NFC has been in virtually every Android smartphone since 2011, plus Google Wallet and Apple's Passbook. It's all here, ready to go. Businesses, and consumers, aren't sold.

Regardless of my personal opinion on the crudeness of NFC, the problem is point-of-sale systems are (at least) three years away from adopting these technologies at any level of ubiquity.

Go to your nearest farmer's market, and they're still dealing in cash! Square is doing wonderful things to bring credit card processing to the masses, but _that_ is cutting edge. Coin is the next step on the consumer side.

Post reply on HN