Coin Announces Official Shutdown of All Product Services Coming February 28

[randyj]

Oh, I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, here in the U.S., our businesses are, by and large, still living in the stone age where payments are concerned. Many businesses haven't bothered to upgrade their POS equipment to NFC-capable equipment. Of the businesses that have upgraded their POS equipment, some of those have purposely disabled NFC payments on their equipment. That's led to customer confusion, and rightly so. I can go to two different businesses that both have the exact same POS terminals and be able to use Apple Pay at one of the businesses but not at the other.

As a business owner myself, I can't fathom a business not allowing a customer to pay using a mainstream payment method. As far as I'm concerned, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay, etc. should all be considered mainstream now. My philosophy has always been to allow people to give me money as many ways as possible so long as doing so doesn't create more of a headache for me. My business does not accept BitCoin, for example, because doing so would be an inconvenience for me.

Businesses in the U.S. need to upgrade their POS terminals so they can accept chip cards anyway; so it boggles my mind why some businesses will do that upgrade and then purposely turn off functionality in the new POS equipment that is customer-friendly.

Every time I read POS - it translated to 'piece of sh#@' equipment etc.
Which is exactly right. Magnetic strips came in when cds became available 30+ years ago.
In Australia you have to use chip and pin. Some places have the strip readers but they don't accept them.
99% of businesses here accept Apple Pay (if you use ANZ bank).
The ones that don't either accept cash or they have an old machine.
The banks here have been the ones driving it making merchants update as chip and pin is far more secure than magnetic. So replacing all terminals would pay for it self with less fraudulent transactions. And all new terminals support NFC.

 

[littyboy]

The alternate Plastc was better anyway.

I would say that... however... they keep lying to their customers about ship dates. Always gets pushed back. A lot of people just gave up on it.

 

[chr1s60]

So Fitbit bought a payment service just to shut it down?... what advantage did they gain from purchasing Coin?

Possibly to develop something for the future?

I personally had 2 of the Coin devices after my original one didn't work. It was a great idea when it was first announced, but it took them way too long to get the product to people which meant Apple Pay and Google Wallet were announced and ready to go by the time people could get to try Coin. To add to it, the whole chip system was on the verge of starting up in the US. Even then there are some added benefits to a card as opposed to using a phone in some situations so it was still relevant, only to a lesser degree.
The device itself was okay at best. Many places it wouldn't work at all and even if the card had previously worked at a place, it was never a guarantee it would work the next time you visited. This kind of eliminated the convenience of the product. The point being to eliminate carrying all your cards, which couldn't be done because you couldn't count on the device working. I should add that their customer service was awful as well. A great idea that came about a few years too late. Hopefully with Fitbit and them teaming up they can develop a better product for future use.

 

[devsfan1830]

Every one of my rewards cards is supported.

Amex Blue Everyday for Groceries (3%)
Costco Visa for Gas (4%), Travel and Restaurants (3%)
Fidelity Rewards for Everything Else (2%)
Discover for quarterly revolving categories (5%)

All with no annual fees.

Apple Pay is also supported by Capital One, Chase and Barclaycard cards....which are the other major rewards providers, though several of them have annual fees.

Wondering which reward cards you're using that aren't supported?

The problem is more the acceptance of ApplePay at stores than the lack of support for cards.

In my experience the lack of card support is still there for at least one of my rewards cards, my PlayStation rewards card backed by Capital One. No idea why but it still gets rejected trying to add it to Apple Pay. One of my others, a GM card also backed by Capital One suddenly worked one day without any announcement. Same as you, retail rollout had been far slower. But its getting there. My of the stores I go to don't even advertise compatibility but it just works with their NFC terminals. Even with Apples best intentions, businesses and banks just have their heads far up their own asses to help roll this out smoother. Its gotten better but I think now is as good as it is going to get. Even so, this all works far better than that POS Coin does.

 

[tmiw]

Its gotten better but I think now is as good as it is going to get.

I've been predicting for a while that the US will only really get to ~50-60% "true" NFC acceptance (that is, the hardware is enabled and actually usable by customers). Thanks to chip and signature and poor relationships between retailers and Visa/MC a lot of places will likely never enable NFC or will simply have the terminal be inaccessible to customers.

That said, that might very well be enough for a significant number of people, especially if your spending is mostly at bigger retailers and you don't eat out often.