Coin Card Teardown

Post by jackmaney » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

jordanthoms wrote: post #98

jackmaney wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't it less secure and deprecated technology? Uhhhh...no? I've lived in the US my entire life, and while I've seen pin and chip readers, I've never had a pin and chip card, never known anyone who has ever had one, and never seen one used. Ever.

That'll change very shortly, first of my US credit cards was just reissued with a chip and you can expect that all of yours will be within the next year or so. Note that it is Chip and Signature though, not chip and pin.

Post by joezydeco » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #65

scoot wrote: post #61

If the mag-stripe emulation is just a simple electromagnet, I'm curious how they detected the position of the read-head in order to modulate the magnet correctly to emulate the data that would otherwise be read at that point of a traditional mag-stripe. Or is it more sophisticated still?

My guess is that this is why they have so many problems. I'd guess that there's probably an accelerometer somewhere to give them an idea of what the swipe velocity is, so they can know how fast to play everything back. But ultimately the way they've chosen to do this seems to be very difficult, especially if those are two very long single coils. It feels like it would be much easier from the software side if they had…

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #15

lvs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like just another startup hardware offering with a spotty launch. But I've always been confused about the perceived "embarrassment" of a card not working at the point of a transaction. This seems to be a common marketing trope in payments, but I don't know what it comes from. It's a piece of technology, and tech often doesn't work quite right. Sometimes my phone restarts itself. What's the big deal?

For me the big deal is that if my card doesn't work—my actual plastic card, that is—then it's the retailer's equipment that is faulty. They fumble around with it—using a plastic bag sometimes, or they move to another terminal—and it works eventually. But the issue is almost always on the reader side, not with the card itself. On the flip side, that retailer has just seen 100 people in a row use their plastic just fin…

Post by ngoel36 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 7:15 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #4

What Coin has managed to do in such a thin package is really impressive. It’s a shame they weren’t able to do it more reliably. It's a really cool idea. I actually wonder what the technological hurdle was that held them back - mechanical (reliably magnetizing the coils, easy-to-break components due to narrow size), software (programming issues), or QA (reliable SoCs, reliable builds, reliable solders)?

Post by scintill76 » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 3:12 AM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #107

scintill76 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least when I researched about a year ago, it's uncommon to get a true chip-and-PIN in the US. Most of the chips are chip-and-signature.

How is chip-and-signature different from the current policy where the buyer (sometimes, decreasingly) has to sign for credit purchases?