Coin Card Teardown (opens in new tab)

Right. But file this away in the "not my problem" draw. You can make all the excuses you want, but this is ultimately up to them to resolve, not for the consumer to deal with.

A comment here indicates that it simply won't work at a bunch of retailers:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/off-topic/coin-vs-pl...

A quick search confirms the caveat:

https://support.onlycoin.com/hc/en-us/articles/204413864-Whe...

(first link noted from a previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9879699 )

Possibly letting me leave 1 or 2 cards at home is not really a great idea.

Whoops, guess I'm wrong.

If that's true, I wonder if something like a paper circuit would work? e.g., http://www.instructables.com/id/Paperduino-20-with-Circuit-S...

I formerly did the same, but it became insufficient.

There are at least 4 cards that I need working at all times: (1) Debit card, as you mentioned, to be able to withdraw cash in a pinch, (2) Chase Sapphire Preferred - card with no FX fee, (3) Corporate Amex for charges I don't want to take on personally, (4) Starwood (SPG) card to amass a non-negligible amount of points on hotel stays. And maybe a 5th on which I'm trying to spend a large amount on quickly (for example - I might be planning to put $1500 on a random card with a big signup bonus, and it might be critical for me to get points I need for an upcoming reservation)

I of course have all of these loaded into my Coin, but each has failed enough times (forcing me to use the debit) that I started carrying the others as backup. Then I found myself carrying 5 cards....plus the Coin. And if Coin is targeted to users like me (who carry multiple credit cards, optimizing for different uses)....then what's the point?

I have been super broke and unable to pay bills at two points in my life - just out of college and trying to find a job after the dot-come bust, and again when my startup failed. During those bad times, I'd lose track of my finances and a few times couldn't pay for my groceries.

I can't describe in words how much I felt like a total, utter failure. All the fears I had about how I was going to pay my bills that month, the pressure from family to pay them back for money borrowed, the pressure from roommates to come up with rent - all came bubbling up in those moments.

After all, I was the first kid in my family to go to college. I was the smart one who was supposed to have his shit together, but there I was - totally broke. It creates a fear that is not rational and hasn't gone away (at least for me).

About a year ago, I forgot my bank card at TJ's and only had $20 bucks on me. I was embarrassed in ways I can't describe. I was cold sweating to the point I was soaking my shirt. I had to leave everything except for some essentials I needed for that night. One of the cashiers lent me $5 to help me pay for my groceries (I paid him back). I feel weird that I accepted the $5, but I wasn't thinking rationally. I wanted to scream "no, really, I have my shit together now." I kept telling myself that this is not a big deal... chill out... But I just couldn't calm myself down. It was like poverty PTSD.

Even though I now have paid off all my debt, school loans and have a healthy nest egg, I still have these fears. Whenever my card won't go through on the first try or I type in the wrong pin number, my heart jumps.

It's entirely irrational.

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 fine, then you come along with your whiz-bang phone or Coin card or whatever, and start failing. The embarrassment comes from everyone else waiting behind you thinking to themselves, "Why not just use a card like everyone else instead of your complicated technology?" Or, "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT THIS GUY WHO THINKS HE'S TOO GOOD FOR REGULAR CARDS!"

To be clear I don't pooh-pooh these things. I totally understand why people would like to ditch a stack of cards for a phone or Coin replacement. Just explaining why it might be embarrassing to rely on these replacements, and then have them fail.

It wastes your time, it wastes the cashier's time. It wastes the time of the people in line behind you. Isn't wasting people's time embarrassing?

Another common cause of credit-card-swipes not working is card declines. It's fairly obvious to the user and cashier, but potentially embarrassing if the people in line behind you assume you've maxed out your credit card/drained your debit card.

It's definitely awkward to have to re-run a card, for a lot of reasons:

At least in the US, there's sort of a social phenomenon of de-emphasizing the payment process at restaurants. Checks are left on the table with a 'whenever you're ready' attitude, and often are not brought until requested. Cards are left on the check and taken away, often silently, to be processed. Checks are kept out-of-sight, for each payer to process individually without a lot of discussion, and tips are usually kept private. All of this amounts to awkwardness if something brings attention to the whole process.

Additionally, since cards are picked up and processed elsewhere, it's awkward for the payer if the waitstaff has to come back and explain that your card didn't work and wait for you to bring out another. Doubly so if they seem busy already, or if you already feel guilty for inconveniencing them by, say, splitting a check in a complex way - which is common for a large class of people, including me. Though I've noticed there's a different large class of people who find this guilt ridiculous.

On top of all this, there's a very real stigma around cards being declined for having insufficient funds. This doesn't really happen in the world of fairly well-off techies, but, running out of money (/ maxing out a credit card) is a very real problem for many people.

Not to mention the awkwardness of 'being the person using newfangled tech'.. and then having it not work on you.

The line behind me wondering why I'm not done yet. Also, by using a Coin, I'm positioning myself as somebody who uses great, new technology. When that fails, it reflects poorly on me. Now I'm the guy who spends money on something that doesn't work, but keeps brandishing it, perhaps for some ego reason.

>I've always been confused about the perceived "embarrassment"

Imagine you've asked someone out on a date and you offer to pick up or even split the check but your card gets declined. I think most people would find this at least moderately embarrassing especially if they don't have a backup payment ready.

I think most nascent tech are buggy. It's part of growing pains. If I'm using something like that, it's mostly to encourage the people behind them by my patronage and for providing them with data from usage outside the controlled environment. I suppose its similar to why there is a community around product hunt, kickstarter etc.

I believe the "embarrassment" trope crops from the misunderstanding behind the motive.

Assuming the point was to aggregate the cards, if the one payment option you brought doesn't work...

Personally, I will often leave any alternatives to the one payment method I intend to use locked in my car.

It's embarrassing because it usually/often indicates you have emptied your checking account or maxed out your line of credit. It's an indication for everyone in earshot that you don't have the means to buy what you're trying to buy. At least, that is where many people's minds go first.

Because some may assume that you don't have enough money to pay your bill.

> What's the big deal?

Oh exactly. Who cares what someone else thinks? You are only causing a brief delay for the people behind you.

Doesn't seem to be any accelerometers anywhere. There are two hidden membrane switches to either side of the coils. The card is probably using the press and release timing of that button as it travels through the reader to guess at the speed of the physical card.

There are patents for dynamic magnetic stripes that have individual coils for each bit. That is probably way too costly for this design, or perhaps too expensive to license it.

After being burnt by Coin at $50, I'm not jumping at the chance to waste $150 with Plastc.

Mag stripe readers are everywhere, but the banks have already started migrating over to chip and pin cards (with mag-stripe for backwards compatibility) for new issues. There are still older cards out there that won't expire for probably ~5 years or so, so I expect to see mag stripe readers around for at least that long. But it's fair to call it deprecated, even in the US.

However, the transition is coming to the US sooner rather than later. Banks want to see this transition happen quickly so that they can reduce fraud rates. Merchants that don't want to spend money on new terminals will be prodded along by the banks pushing fraud liability over to them.

This all ultimately means that this iteration of the Coin Card (mag-stripe only) has a pretty limited shelf life.

It's the same in Europe. You can pay everywhere with any debit card. These cards have both a magnetic strip and a chip. The readers have a slot for reading with the strip and reading with the chip. Most shops have taped the magnetic strip slot shut because it's deemed insecure. Indeed, the only reason that Coin works at all is that magnetic strips can be easily copied, also by criminals with fake readers, or criminals who put a small card copy gadget in front of the reading slot of an ATM machine, along with a camera to capture your pin code.

Then again, the whole credit card system which is popular in the US is even more hilariously insecure (you only need a picture of the card!!) and it doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.

Plastc, https://www.plastc.com, has solved the multiple chip and pin issue. Although in an interesting yak shaving way due to the emv restrictions.

https://www.plastc.com/blog/talk-with-the-founders-update

Oh this makes a lot of sense, thank you for the clarification.

Too bad the product is unreliable or else I would get one right away.

Kinda like apple-pay then...

Except when you're the top country by economic standards the "everywhere else" has zero weight. Thus why it's still the standard.

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.

I've had a chip in my card for many years now, but that's probably because it's a "travel" card and it's there so that you can use it abroad. All new replacement cards I've received in the past year or so have had chips. I also see chip readers on terminals at most retailers but curiously they have them turned off for now.

It's deprecated in most of the rest of the world now, we've moved on through chip-cards and now contactless cards. The USA is really behind in credit-card tech.

The Coin card was never going to sell outside the USA (not that that's a small market or anything! But even the US is going to move on eventually).

Here in Canada we mostly use chip-and-pin cards, glad to be ahead of US on this one.

Luckily GCC works great with it as it's an ARM Cortex M0. I use the GCC ARM embedded toolchain here and haven't had issues: https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded The only gotcha is that you need to sign up with an account on Nordic's site to get access to their SDK and libraries, however I'm pretty sure that's just a formality and it's free to sign up (just can't distribute its firmware source, etc).

Pretty much nobody accepts signature-only cards in UK, it's all chip and pin now. I am sure US will follow suit soon.

Are you sure? I ask because the majority of US card issuers have opted to use chip&signature, not chip&pin cards. In my wallet I only have one chip&pin card (Well Fargo). The rest are chip&signature. Whether or not they send you a PIN is a good indicator of which auth method the card supports.