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Plastc Card

plastc.com

291–300 of 356 posts

Re: Plastc Card

#291
post #16

They say this supports chip-and-PIN, but I don't believe them until they explain how. If I have a chip-and-PIN card from my bank, the chip has an unreadable secret used to generate one-time cryptograms to verify the authenticity of the card. There's no way to get that secret onto my Plastc card. You'd need partnerships with banks to get a new secret the way Apple Pay does. Without those, this sounds like it'll be use…

We're not getting chip and pin, it's actually going to be chip and signature with chip and pin coming later. Atleast that's what I've been told.

Re: Plastc Card

#292
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of cards. Between gift cards, loyalty cards, and credit cards, I have at least 20-30 that I'd like to carry on me. I end up leaving cards I don't use every day in my car (and am always paranoid about the valet as a result). I use a KeyRing app for loyalty cards, but it's a pain and requires me often typing numbers into things. I often find myself in a Starbucks, realizing I left the Starbucks gift card i…

I don't get how you can end up with so many cards, it's seems like a very american problem. I have 5 cards in my wallet: * Debit card and a Visa credit card: both with chip&pin and allowing me to do secure transaction on the internet * A public transport card: RFC, also allow me to rent bikes * An ID card, also with a chip&pin, allow me to sign documents and fill my taxes * An insurance card which is not even a magne…

Add in a driver's license, three more credit cards to take advantage of various bonus point offers which depend on what and where you buy things, a corporate credit card, corporate access key car, and three loyalty cards for the supermarkets where you shop most often. Now imagine you have a birthday party and your six of your friends give you gift cards to various stores and restaurants.

I've been minimizing my wallet, but still plenty of cardboard buy-5-get-1-free coffee cards somehow make their way into it. It really depends on the individual. In any case, I think that the idea of this one-card-to-rule-them all is wonderful. I realize it is wishful thinking, but I want to see them pull this off.

Re: Plastc Card

#293

The ridiculous number of features on this card makes it really hard to believe that an unknown startup has the resources to pull it off in the form factor as thin as a credit card. Coin still hasn't gotten there yet (they claim it works at 85% of the locations they visited). Adding more features including wireless charging coils and unknown method for duplicating chip and pin makes me really skeptical that this will…

i still question the need with smartphones and NFC..

its like too little too late

Re: Plastc Card

#294
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how you can end up with so many cards, it's seems like a very american problem. I have 5 cards in my wallet: * Debit card and a Visa credit card: both with chip&pin and allowing me to do secure transaction on the internet * A public transport card: RFC, also allow me to rent bikes * An ID card, also with a chip&pin, allow me to sign documents and fill my taxes * An insurance card which is not even a magne…

Add in a driver's license, three more credit cards to take advantage of various bonus point offers which depend on what and where you buy things, a corporate credit card, corporate access key car, and three loyalty cards for the supermarkets where you shop most often. Now imagine you have a birthday party and your six of your friends give you gift cards to various stores and restaurants. I've been minimizing my walle…

Gift card for restaurants? It's that seriously a thing? What message are you supposed to get when you receive one, "I would like to offer you dinner but can't spare one hour to eat it with you"?

Re: Plastc Card

#295

I think most people in the market for something next-generation are going to be looking for more than just "how do I consolidate onto 1 physical card". They're going to want to fundamentally improve the payment system with a completely cardless, PIN-less (save for unlocking it once in the morning), wrist-based device. Plastc is $155 and you still have to: 1. pull something out of your wallet 2. select a virtual card…

Forget a "wrist-based device", I'm waiting for PluseWallet, that completely device-free payment system that works by scanning the circulatory layout of your hand: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/7/5281692/pulsewallet-pay-wit...

Re: Plastc Card

#297
post #283
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was quite obviously either completely rendered, or rendered on top of an actual video. It felt like a plain commercial, with "cgi" added ontop of it for effect. I mean, no one expects little flying transparent windows to pop out the side of their card, do they? Of course not. So I don't think they were doing it surreptitiously, but merely to make a pretty "commercial" to sell their product.

Well, sure, but for a device that pushes some technological limits (a responsive touchscreen UI built into a credit card) I think seeing it in action is pretty important. So far all I know is what they want it to be like, which means little to me.

It's super obvious that it would be CGI after reading those specs. They're pretty impossible with current technologies.

Re: Plastc Card

#298
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The microcontroller, smart card interface, eInk screen, bluetooth capability (including antenna), NFC (including antenna), and touch screen all seem reasonable and there isn't anything earth shattering tech wise (but probably a customized asic using off the shelf bits). Connecting this all together on some fiberglass or plastic substrate is hard, and expensive to tool for (I'd expect), but definitely possible. The in…

You really believe you can fit an eink display, a touch screen digitizer, a microcontroller, bluetooth and nfc on a card that thin and sell it for 155 dollars?

Yes. If the eInk screen uses the card plastic in place of the glass which usually backs such a screen, it can easily be thin enough for a credit card form factor.

Touch screen digitizing can be done resistively with overlaid wires over the screen. Their touch interface doesn't have to be super accurate, you only seem to touch in a few distinct locations.

A microcontroller is already inside every chip and pin card on the planet. They usually run Java. Yes, Java :)

Bluetooth is just more silicon to do the radio, not hard to stick it on the side of the microcontroller silicon or even have a two-die configuration with wire bonding between the dies. Go look at TI or Freescale 2.4 GHz radio+micro parts, same thing just there it's in a QFN or other solder-down package, but the dies themselves are quite small. A 2.4 GHz antenna is easy to fab out of printed silver or other printable conductive material onto plastic.

NFC is already in many credit cards for the whole "tap to pay" thing. It's just some extra silicon on the side of the microcontroller in existing solutions. Harvesting power from NFC is just some diodes and a resonant circuit along with loop antenna.

Realistically, such a piece of silicon plus the antennas plus the plastic card should only cost you single digit dollars in volume to manufacture. Adding an eInk screen like that is another couple bucks, at most. The $155 price point is probably so they can make back their up-front costs as getting customized silicon isn't cheap, nor is some of the development work they did to get all the features integrated.

If this concept takes off, I'd expect in 2-3 years that cards like this are issued by banks for free to customers. The cost of manufacturing really isn't that high.

EDIT: But getting enough battery packed in to avoid charging every day or two, that's really the novel part if they have real bluetooth operation.

Re: Plastc Card

#299
post #35

What need does this address? Are cards taking up too much room in people's lives? This solution doesn't reduce the height or width of the encumbrance at all, and reduces the depth only by n*.76mm, where n is the number of cards that will be replaced. I don't get it. Also, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheZenOfProgramming

I have a lot of cards. Between gift cards, loyalty cards, and credit cards, I have at least 20-30 that I'd like to carry on me. I end up leaving cards I don't use every day in my car (and am always paranoid about the valet as a result). I use a KeyRing app for loyalty cards, but it's a pain and requires me often typing numbers into things. I often find myself in a Starbucks, realizing I left the Starbucks gift card i…

But would you be able to find/remember all those cards if they were stored in this thing? Isn't it the pretty plastic and embossed pictures that scream "Barnes & Noble"? Would burying that inside a Plastc mean you never used them?

Re: Plastc Card

#300
post #16

They say this supports chip-and-PIN, but I don't believe them until they explain how. If I have a chip-and-PIN card from my bank, the chip has an unreadable secret used to generate one-time cryptograms to verify the authenticity of the card. There's no way to get that secret onto my Plastc card. You'd need partnerships with banks to get a new secret the way Apple Pay does. Without those, this sounds like it'll be use…

Surely this can be dealt with via HCE (Host Card Emulation), no?
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