According to several reports, Coin – the one card to replace them all- has delayed complete launch until next year.
COIN released a wildly popular product as part of pretail crowdfunding campaign. A witty pitch video, that went viral, described a product that most people quickly understood – and wanted. A single credit card sized device that would potentially replace all of your other cards weighing down your wallet. An initial funding raise of $50,000 was surpassed in 40 minutes of launch. According to the COIN web site, the young company continues to take preorders today.
Co-founded by CEO Kanishk Parashar, he stated at the time;
“It is extremely important to us to maintain trust, transparency and a two-way channel with the Coin community. “We want to create a window into our company and involve our backers every step of the way.”
Today according to CNET, COIN will delay full product release until the Spring of 2015. To quote CNET;
The pushed back shipping date is not Coin’s only cause for concern. Complicating the company’s roadmap is the absence of a specialized security microchip that is in the process of being adopted by the US credit card industry. When the consumer version of Coin launches next year, it will not contain such a chip. The company has said that it will only begin addressing that issue after its current product begins shipping next spring.
Customers who spent $55 to pre-order the device last year have also expressed concerns that Coin’s promise to bring technology’s simplicity to our wallets may already be behind the times. Coin has worked to address criticism by publishing periodic progress reports pots to its pre-order customers. Notably absent, however, has been discussion about these security chips.
While CNET is correct there have been discussions as to the forthcoming migration to “EMV”, basically the next generation payment chip as opposed to the magnet strip many use today, – COIN has stated publicly they expect their product to adapt to changing technology. CNET does quote Kanishk stating they do not have a time frame on working on the next generation product. EMV is expected to be widely in use by October 2015 – so backers of COIN may have a product that has a rather short lifespan.
Slashgear stated the initial run of COIN cards will only work in 85% of POS terminals and it will be missing the “left behind” feature that reminds you when your card has gone missing. You can upgrade from the beta card once the complete COIN version is available for a $30 fee.
As part of the announced delay COIN did state they were expanding COIN beta to the first 10,000 customers.
Fast moving technology has quickly driven many viable products to the artifact shelf. Hopefully COIN can iterate quickly enough to get a solid product on the market before they are lapped by new technology or competing products. We have already seen similar products crop up like One Card crowdfunding on Demohour in China.
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