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Startup Touts All-in-One Digital Credit Card

Posted by timothy on from the fewer-pieces-to-steal dept.

First time accepted submitter NoImNotNineVolt writes "Coin, a Y Combinator-backed startup, has started accepting pre-orders for a device as slim as a standard piece of payment plastic that can hold eight credit, debit, and gift cards in its dynamic magnetic stripe. Paired with the Coin smartphone app via Bluetooth low energy, card details can easily be swapped in and out of the device. A minimalist user interface on the device itself allows the owner to toggle between the loaded cards and then swipe just as they would their ordinary card. All card details are encrypted (both on the device and in the smartphone app), and the device's on-board battery is expected to last for two years of typical usage. No support for chip&pin (EMV) yet, so this may have limited utility outside of the USA. They expect to start shipping in summer of 2014."

6 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Great for CC scammers by hsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now an all in one solution to skim and use credit cards.

    But, I don't see this catching on. Tapping to pay with your device is "new" so people don't think much of it. Paying with an "all in one" credit card isn't something most will be used to. Plus, I'd expect pushback from Visa/AMEX on this.

    1. Re:Great for CC scammers by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Quick little dive in to the code with a debugger and watch those limitations vanish in front of your eyes......

    2. Re:Great for CC scammers by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Vendors are not supposed to accept card without a valid signature on them. That alone would place them in breach of contract with the credit issuers and card processors if they accepted a cloned card.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    3. Re:Great for CC scammers by xaxa · · Score: 5, Informative

      This style of card is becoming more common in Europe right now, and a lot of automated terminals won't take a card that only has a magnetic stripe, apparently.

      It is almost universal in Europe (95% of terminals, 85% of cards, two years ago), and plenty of other countries. A card with a chip is almost essential if you travel to Europe -- I can't remember the last time I saw a ticket machine (or similar) accept a magstripe.

      http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/american-travelers-guide-emv-chip-cards-1271.php is informative. I'm not convinced by '"In fact, as a late adopter of EMV, there's a great upside for the industry in the U.S. because we can avoid much of the cost and complexity involved in deploying older-generation chip cards, while still reaping all of the benefits of reduced counterfeit fraud,"' -- the US industry has had 10 extra years of fraud! (I have to phone my bank before using my card in the US, and give them the dates I will be travelling. Numbers are stolen in Europe, and used on fake cards in the US.)

  2. Cute; but why? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cramming a UI and the electromagnetics required to spoof a mag stripe into something small enough to make it through a card reader is pretty impressive; but I just don't see the point.

    I need another intermediary in my payment system like I need a hole in the head(and I certainly don't need any credit card details stashed in yet another OMGTOTALLY SECURE!!! server or app), and I'd need a hell of a lot of plastic infesting my wallet before a $100 piece of hardware, and BTLE-compatible smartphone become the lower-hassle alternative.

    Along with a card reader, it'd probably be great fun as a tool for duplicating low security cards(eg. copier stored value cards, which commonly actually store their value in the stripe, rather than just encoding an ID that gets looked up by the payment processor), and generally fucking around with mag stripe readers; but for actual real-world financial transactions? How many credit cards do you carry on a daily basis?

  3. Didn't work for iCache Geode... by irregular_hero · · Score: 4, Informative

    Been there done that. This was the same thing touted by the folks at "iCache" who released a few test units of the "Geode" -- an iPhone jacket and universal card combo that could do this as well as provide support for barcodes using an e-ink window on the back of the case.

    Unfortunately, the company -- after a successful Kickstarter and infusion of venture cash, crashed and burned. HARD.

    http://www.zdnet.com/icache-geodes-spectacular-crash-and-burn-7000014801/

    As it turns out, there were huge limitations on where this type of "cloned" card could be used -- no ATMs, no "pull through" swipers like at gas pumps... It all fell apart quite noisily with accusations of fraud and deceit on the part of the company's founders.

    The bottom line is this: Payment card providers require three things: 1) the card should be signed, 2) the card should be present so the merchant can verify the expiration and CVV (or pay a CNP fee), and 3) the card provider's logo must be visible on the card. Failure to comply with any of the three means a merchant may lose his ability to accept cards to the provider. The Geode could do ONE of those things; the same goes for this card, as technically interesting as it may be.

    And of course this goes out the window as NFC or chip-and-pin cards eventually come into fashion in the US (as chip-and-pin already is in Europe).