To any of you who were interested in "Coin", read up

Mook

Mr. Manager
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May 23, 2007
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Mike
innovation!

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/be-careful-with-coin/?_r=0

Coin is not handing the cards out for review because they are not in production yet. It promises to have them ready by this summer. The company is raising money to build them by asking people to pay in advance. (All the ads you see online, and there are loads of them, are paid for with investors’ money, not those orders, the company says.)

It is being sold for $105, though if you order before the end of this week it is $55. (The company hinted that it might extend the discount longer.)

But here are two things to think about. First, the device, by the company’s own admission deep on its website, will last only two years. The battery cannot be recharged, so if you find the device useful, you’ll need to shell out another $100 to keep using it. So think of it as a $50-a-year subscription, if that helps it go down easier.

Consider this as well: When you buy it, you are agreeing to terms of service that give you no protection. Should something go wrong — name your worst fear: the device broadcasts your credit card numbers, it is hacked, the site containing your encrypted numbers is hacked, the numbers are improperly encrypted, merchants refuse it — it’s not Coin’s problem. The company says it is confident it will work as promised. “We stand by our product,” a spokeswoman emailed.

Cliffs:

- coin is taking people's money when they haven't even produced one unit yet
- using coin may violate your CC's ToS and render the machine worthless
- coin takes no responsibility for anything that goes wrong with your 'card'

Oh and :rofl:

The company also says that if the service doesn’t work as promised, well, also your problem.
 

willizm

Very Nice, Very Evil
May 13, 2009
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This is a badass idea especially for someone like me that travels. As with any innovation it will take time for the over all market to catch up to the concept so things like CC TOC's will eventually adopt this platform. other things like battery life will only improve along with security and functional use. It's just a matter of time before we are carrying no cards and everything is accounted via our smartphones via RFID or something similar.
 

willizm

Very Nice, Very Evil
May 13, 2009
12,829
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The Woodlands, TX
Is it that hard to carry two-three cards? :rofl:

No thanks to coin.

I have this case and travel with it instead of carrying a wallet. 1 ID and 2 major CC's

iPhone5_Stowaway_CallOutFeature.jpg


The less I have to carry the better. When you live on the road as much as I do you come to really appreciate the concept of traveling light. :)
 

Mike K

TCG Elite Member
Apr 11, 2008
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Is it that hard to carry two-three cards? :rofl:

No thanks to coin.

If you have like 6 or 7 cards for points and some are for business while others are for personal use then yeah, it's a pretty neat device to have.

Also, it's not unheard of for companies like this to crowdsource funding/ sales before ever building a single unit. There are loads of recent examples of this that ended successfully. So that in and of itself doesn't bother me.

The only thing that did bother me is you essentially are cloning credit cards which seems like it would be a big no-no for the credit card companies. Likewise it would be an issue when going to pay, as many merchants check the name on the card against an ID. If you have a device on you that can basically suck up any random credit card and mimic it I can see that as a potentially for bad things to happen.

But this thing has been so heavily advertised that you have to assume the card companies know about it and I have to imagine they would have said something by now.
 

Mr_Roboto

Doing the jobs nobody wants to
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Feb 4, 2012
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This company will probably get eaten by someone. My guess is Paypal or Square. Not really for this product but some of the ideas and concepts they present, especially if they are patented. Imagine something like this tied to a paypal acct.

That being said though this could be some Chinese company looking for CC #s. What a great hoax that would turn out to be. I don't know if I would really want to put ALL my cards into someone's app.
 
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