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Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until then, we

Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until then, we have to deal with it somehow.

brettgoldstein3 13y ago
Isn't the "old crusty infrastructure" in this case the credit card itself? It seems ridiculous to try to kill the credit card with... a credit card. I wouldn't be surprised if Clinkle, LoopPay, Square, or any of the many startups in this space kills the credit card (and thus Coin) before Coin makes its first delivery in Summer 2014.
- dakrisht 13y ago
  Absolutely not. The old crusty layer is everything you don't see running in the background. The banks, the payment systems, the clearing houses, the entire system as a whole.
- jammur 13y ago
  I think you're underestimating how entrenched the CC companies are in our society. I agree that they'll eventually be replaced, but I doubt it will be in the next year, let alone the next 5 years. I think Coin is a nice intermediate step between 10 cards in your wallet, and no wallet at all. Intermediate steps are viable businesses. I think Square is an intermediate step, and they seem to be doing just fine. They're obviously going to be at the forefront of eliminating cards all together, but they knew that credit cards aren't going away anytime soon, and so they leveraged that to get their foot in the door with the merchants.
- qq66 13y ago
  If you wouldn't be surprised by that, you must not be frequently surprised.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  Square, which is a point-of-sale system? Two other things, which the billions of people who use credit cards every day have never heard of? What would constitute "killing" the credit card, anyway? Less than 5% of the population using it? I don't see that happening for a good 15 or 20 years at a bare minimum.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Do keep in mind, though, that of the "billions of people" who use credit cards, the number that use cards that can be cloned by reading the magnetic stripe is fast dwindling. Until/unless Coin gets cosy enough with the card associations to the point where they can get some way of cloning chip and pin cards (EMV), they're DOA in a quickly rising list of countries that already covers the majority of the developed world. And a large part of the point of chip and pin cards is that they're meant to be impossible to clone. E.g. in France it supposedly cut card fraud by about 80% for in-person transactions. So unless Coin can convince them that it will be as secure or more secure than these cards, they're going to be pretty much limited to the US, and increasingly get marginalised in the US too: Most large US banks have announced rollout plans for EMV cards (though many will be chip + signature rather than chip + pin).
dakrisht 13y ago
Without a doubt. Coin actually increases the complexity of an already complex and archaic system. The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer and the merchant by consolidating various credit cards in a digital device with a nice "cool" factor but lacking any real solution to the many problems associated with the complex back-ends in the payments space. Conceptually, it's not a bad product, and it sucks that the founders are probably reading hundreds of people slamming their hard work. But it's reality.
- bradgessler 13y ago
  The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer I have 4 credit cards in my wallet. If this consolidates down to 1 then I don't care what else it does.
  - bronson 13y ago
    What if it consolidates four reliable cards down to one mostly-reliable one?
    - RandallBrown 13y ago
      What if my car breaks down? That doesn't mean that cars were a bad idea, just that I have a crappy car. Do you have any reason to believe that Coin will be any less reliable than a regular credit card?
      - unreal37 13y ago
        Yes, how about "many merchants won't accept it". Or "the battery runs out after 1 year."
        RandallBrown 13y ago
        As far as I know, neither of those things are true. Many merchants I swipe my own card and they never see it. A waitress may question it, but I have no reason to believe they won't accept it if it is validated by their card reader. The website says the battery should last two years.
chaz 13y ago
Google Voice for credit cards is ... Google Wallet. Or at least, it was supposed to have been. Page killed it off before this year's I/O. http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/google-kills-its-plans-for-a-physical-google-wallet-card/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/google-kills-its-pla...
dsl 13y ago
> Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card" Hopefully not "Google Wave for Credit Card"
- mkramlich 13y ago
  or G+ for credit card

Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until then, we have to deal with it somehow.

brettgoldstein3 13y ago

Isn't the "old crusty infrastructure" in this case the credit card itself? It seems ridiculous to try to kill the credit card with... a credit card. I wouldn't be surprised if Clinkle, LoopPay, Square, or any of the many startups in this space kills the credit card (and thus Coin) before Coin makes its first delivery in Summer 2014.

dakrisht 13y ago
Absolutely not. The old crusty layer is everything you don't see running in the background. The banks, the payment systems, the clearing houses, the entire system as a whole.
jammur 13y ago
I think you're underestimating how entrenched the CC companies are in our society. I agree that they'll eventually be replaced, but I doubt it will be in the next year, let alone the next 5 years. I think Coin is a nice intermediate step between 10 cards in your wallet, and no wallet at all. Intermediate steps are viable businesses. I think Square is an intermediate step, and they seem to be doing just fine. They're obviously going to be at the forefront of eliminating cards all together, but they knew that credit cards aren't going away anytime soon, and so they leveraged that to get their foot in the door with the merchants.
qq66 13y ago
If you wouldn't be surprised by that, you must not be frequently surprised.
devindotcom 13y ago
Square, which is a point-of-sale system? Two other things, which the billions of people who use credit cards every day have never heard of? What would constitute "killing" the credit card, anyway? Less than 5% of the population using it? I don't see that happening for a good 15 or 20 years at a bare minimum.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Do keep in mind, though, that of the "billions of people" who use credit cards, the number that use cards that can be cloned by reading the magnetic stripe is fast dwindling. Until/unless Coin gets cosy enough with the card associations to the point where they can get some way of cloning chip and pin cards (EMV), they're DOA in a quickly rising list of countries that already covers the majority of the developed world. And a large part of the point of chip and pin cards is that they're meant to be impossible to clone. E.g. in France it supposedly cut card fraud by about 80% for in-person transactions. So unless Coin can convince them that it will be as secure or more secure than these cards, they're going to be pretty much limited to the US, and increasingly get marginalised in the US too: Most large US banks have announced rollout plans for EMV cards (though many will be chip + signature rather than chip + pin).

dakrisht 13y ago

Without a doubt. Coin actually increases the complexity of an already complex and archaic system. The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer and the merchant by consolidating various credit cards in a digital device with a nice "cool" factor but lacking any real solution to the many problems associated with the complex back-ends in the payments space. Conceptually, it's not a bad product, and it sucks that the founders are probably reading hundreds of people slamming their hard work. But it's reality.

bradgessler 13y ago
The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer I have 4 credit cards in my wallet. If this consolidates down to 1 then I don't care what else it does.
- bronson 13y ago
  What if it consolidates four reliable cards down to one mostly-reliable one?
  - RandallBrown 13y ago
    What if my car breaks down? That doesn't mean that cars were a bad idea, just that I have a crappy car. Do you have any reason to believe that Coin will be any less reliable than a regular credit card?
    - unreal37 13y ago
      Yes, how about "many merchants won't accept it". Or "the battery runs out after 1 year."
      - RandallBrown 13y ago
        As far as I know, neither of those things are true. Many merchants I swipe my own card and they never see it. A waitress may question it, but I have no reason to believe they won't accept it if it is validated by their card reader. The website says the battery should last two years.

chaz 13y ago

Google Voice for credit cards is ... Google Wallet. Or at least, it was supposed to have been. Page killed it off before this year's I/O. http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/google-kills-its-plans-for-a-physical-google-wallet-card/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/05/google-kills-its-pla...

dsl 13y ago

> Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card" Hopefully not "Google Wave for Credit Card"

mkramlich 13y ago
or G+ for credit card