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Surely this sort of tech is dead in the water. It's a workaround to a problem that doesn't exist in RoW, where we already have contactless "tap to pay" credit/debit cards and magstrips are supported only for legacy (usually American) cards.

Even the USA will be migrating to EMV chip cards very soon, with widespread rollout in 2015 and liability shift scheduled for October 2016 - meaning that retailers will be reluctant to accept magstrip swipes after that date since they'll be liable for fraudulent transactions.
 
This just shows how not secure the old swipe method is: anyone with access to your card can "copy" it and then use it whenever and wherever they want, since no PIN in required to use it!
 
Probably one of the most ill conceived products ever. So you have to carry around a plastic fob, then when you want to pay, plug it into your phone then launch an app. and then tell the app. which card to use. What a pain,
isn't the whole point of contact less payment to make things quicker and easier for small value transactions.:rolleyes:
 
What's the status on "Coin"? I was intrigued until the last update I read stated "Sometime in 2014".
 
EMV or ?

Yes, EMV. It's not strong in the US, but a big push from MasterCard and Visa should help. Any retailer not moved over by 2015 will have the liability placed on them if something happens. And that should light a fire under a lot of the bigger retailers. Target is about to spend $100 million on the upgrade.
EMV cards don't have to have a magnetic strip on the back, but some do simply as a fallback.
And this still doesn't answer what will happen when EMV takes over.

Hi DrumJim,

All good points, but the fact remains that EMV has been around since 1996, and still less than 5% acceptance in the US, and not meaning to correct you, but almost all if not all EMV cards have a mag stripe. Still subject to skimming with a mag stripe. I think most of the people are missing the point. An EMV card is just that. Security for one card, not for all your cards. That's why I backed them on Kickstarter, and the only reason I'm here. It secures all my cards all of the time, and as a bonus I can finally keep track of all those darn gift cards give me, because they're too lazy to shop for a gift. Even if Target, Wal Mart and all the rest of them mandate EMV, which they won't, it won't move "the needle" given the vast number of POS devices in the US in small to medium sized retailers.
 
Coin with Chip and Pin / EMV

Yes, this came to market first, but they will be hosed by 2015 when companies will be spending billions (cumulatively across the country) to update their POS infrastructure to the Chip and Pin / EMV. I have many cards that don't expire until 2016, so it's definitely not going to happen overnight.

http://onlycoin.com Coin at least is willing to remedy the situation without extra hardware to plug in or attach to the phone at checkout, and they promise future support for Chip and Pin / EMV, so they won't leave their customers high and dry yet.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/innovation/coin-card-startup/

#MyThinnerWallet
 
they promise future support for Chip and Pin / EMV, so they won't leave their customers high and dry yet.

How do they plan to do that? These devices essentially work by card cloning. Magstrips are very easy to clone. EMV chips are extremely difficult. Cloning is exactly what EMV is designed to prevent!
 
Coin EMV Support ...

How do they plan to do that? These devices essentially work by card cloning. Magstrips are very easy to clone. EMV chips are extremely difficult. Cloning is exactly what EMV is designed to prevent!

I'm not sure how they plan to do it. My assumption is when they come out with the second version of the product, it will support one or the other or both types of swipes (swipe like we do now, then perhaps a reprogrammable chip that conforms to your specific card) - the possibilities are out there. I just hope someone gets it right.

I am a Coin backer, so I'm excited to see what they do with the product. Loop will be dead in the water within a year if they don't adapt to EMV.
 
EMV is coming to the US, Yes Walmart accepts it and so do many other merchants, however it still doesn't make this fob useless.

Just because the terminal has Chip & PIN, does not mean it has NFC (See: Walmart). However every Chip & PIN Terminal I came across (both in the US & abroad) has a mag stripe reader, for reading cards without the chip, gift/loyalty, as well as for a fallback if the chip failed for any reason.

Your bank can issue you what's called a "Mobile mag stripe" card for this purpose and it'll work just fine for many years to come.

EMV cards have what's called Service Code 201, which means that if you try to swipe the card anyway, it'll state "Insert Card"...unless the chip is failing.

I don't see Verifone or Ingenico getting rid of the Mag Stripe swipe anytime soon, as many gift cards, loyalty cards like Safeway Club are not going to be a chip, simply because of cost.
 
EMV is coming to the US, Yes Walmart accepts it and so do many other merchants, however it still doesn't make this fob useless.

Just because the terminal has Chip & PIN, does not mean it has NFC (See: Walmart).

I'd be surprised if the US EMV rollout doesn't include contactless/NFC. The majority of new EMV cards and terminals in other countries already include it. Given that retailers are going to have to upgrade their equipment anyway to support Chip & Pin, there's virtually zero additional cost for them to enable NFC.

There's also a strong incentive for card issuers to encourage retailers to support contactless, as they can capture more low-value transactions that might otherwise be made with cash. And retailers reduce their cash handling costs.

However every Chip & PIN Terminal I came across (both in the US & abroad) has a mag stripe reader, for reading cards without the chip, gift/loyalty, as well as for a fallback if the chip failed for any reason.

The liability shift in 2016 will make retailers responsible for any fraudulent transactions made using the Magstrip reader. So retailers will be reluctant to accept any non-EMV card transactions, unless there's no alternative.
 
Here's a few things I don't like about this:
1. It doesn't work at a gas station or ATM type reader.
2. When I'm at a restaurant or bar, I'd either have to give my phone to the server, or go back and put my phone up to their POS myself.
3. I would still need to carry my wallet around because this tech doesn't work %100

BOOM! goes the dynamite. There are way more times I use a CC to pay that they take my card then me actually swiping it. Zero chance I'm handing off a $700+ smartphone to someone with lord knows what foodstuffs/water or worse on their hands so they can go charge my card. I'm not even a germaphobe, just creates a thousand ways your phone gets dropped, scratched, wet or stolen.
 
BOOM! goes the dynamite. There are way more times I use a CC to pay that they take my card then me actually swiping it. Zero chance I'm handing off a $700+ smartphone to someone with lord knows what foodstuffs/water or worse on their hands so they can go charge my card. I'm not even a germaphobe, just creates a thousand ways your phone gets dropped, scratched, wet or stolen.

Not quite. In the case of a restaurant, you give the server the fob to take to the register, not your smartphone. You can set the fob for a 10 minute limit or more with the default card info that you want to use for the payment. In my opinion this is better than a card since now they don't have physical access to the card to write down the info for malicious intent.
 
Coin is already working on chip and pin integration...

I think, based on what I could find on the way Chip and Pin (or EMV) works, the technology by its nature prevents Coin from working. The possible exception would be if they got signon from the cc-issuing companies, and then only supported the online authentication option.

Tech details are here:
http://www.smartcardalliance.org/pages/publications-emv-faq#q10
but even more here:
http://www.level2kernel.com/flow_chart.html

Essentially, the chip in an EMV card makes it so that paying with a card requires both something you know (your pin) and something you have (your card). The chip is what ties those things together. When you enter your pin at a terminal, the chip encrypts it using its unique serial number (which by nature is not accessible by something like a Coin reader or anything else, since otherwise its no longer secure) and that encrypted data is then sent to the card issuer to ok. For Coin to work as an EMV card, the card issuer will need to agree to accept your Coin's encrypted version of your pin as well as their normal one. Maybe Coin has that kind of negotiating power, or will by the time its necessary, but I'm not super optimistic.

As someone who travels, I was really optimistic that Coin or a competitor could single-handedly make my normal cards Chip and Pin until I really read up on the tech. Now... not so much. I guess I'll wait and see, but in the meantime security-wise, EMV can't come soon enough for me.
 
Perhaps you don't know what Loop does? It's a payment and wallet platform, not a device that you carry around with you so you can get special offers while your in a store. IBeacons is not a wallet nor does it have the ability to make a payment. By the way, the Charge case version of the Loop is Bluetooth.

Then perhaps you need to educate yourself, because it's coming: https://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/16/ibeacon-mobile-payments/

If the people at LoopPay can't see the real purpose behind iBeacons and TouchID, then they're either morons or not paying attention. Either way they will fail because they don't see what is coming and how much better it will be. Retail locations and baseball stadiums have already been adding iBeacons. This is how Apple gets their payment system into every store: iBeacons has great marketing potential. Stores want it to engage with customers. Customers will want it because they can easily pay for their goods. All it takes is Apple updating the software at the retail level and device level. Pay using your iTunes account info using your finger. Apple gets a small cut per transaction. The technology is secure and long range. Everybody loves it because it's simple and you only need your iPhone.

Again—to reiterate—this is coming. The only question is when? I have doubts it would be widespread enough by this autumn for iOS 8, but Apple might start a limited trial at select retailers. I don't expect widespread adoption until at least late 2015. A company like LoopPay can't survive in that environment. Best of luck to you if you work there.
 
Not quite. In the case of a restaurant, you give the server the fob to take to the register, not your smartphone. You can set the fob for a 10 minute limit or more with the default card info that you want to use for the payment. In my opinion this is better than a card since now they don't have physical access to the card to write down the info for malicious intent.

That helps, but I'm guessing my CC is smaller/thinner than a fob. Even the fob/swiper for Square is not exactly something I carry in my pocket. However if what you're explaining is true, then yes it is a step in the right direction.
 
That helps, but I'm guessing my CC is smaller/thinner than a fob. Even the fob/swiper for Square is not exactly something I carry in my pocket. However if what you're explaining is true, then yes it is a step in the right direction.

I just got my fob yesterday and tried it the first time today. All i had to do was use the fob attached to my keychain up to the CC reader and it read it on the first try. I do agree that the fob is a bit bulky. So far I do like it better than carrying around a wallet of cards, but I'll have to see how it is once the newness wears off. I hope that in a later revision they can make the fob at least thinner.
 
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