COIN, the “one card to replace them all”, has finally announced its 2.0 version – an improvement in technology that leapfrogs their 1.0 card.
COIN ran a super successful pretail crowdfunding campaign by catching the imagination of people interested in leaving their credit/debit cards at home for a single unified card. Makes sense. Then along came the Apple with their Apple Pay technology and interest in COIN appeared to wane. This, along with a few other hurdles, hurt the young company but the 2.0 version may reanimate the startups prospects.
This new version, available as a free upgrade for all existing COIN holders (good move), is shipping now with NFC technology and a “tap to pay” feature. So no more need to swipe, but you still can if you want.
Another painful shortcoming in the COIN 1.0 version was missing EMV. This standard is supposed to swoop in and become the standard in the US by the end of the year. It is already widely used elsewhere around the world. COIN states they have enabled over-the-air updates that will add EMV AND other features going forward. Their “contactless EMV” approach, the future of payments, is the same protocol used by Apple Pay and Android Pay.
While COIN still has not fulfilled delivery to all early backers having only shipped about 80,000 devices during their first 4 months (which was late) – existing supporters should be comforted as they can now receive a more viable COIN product.
Will COIN replace all of your credit cards? Who knows. But if you want to carry a single card, instead of many, COIN has now become a competitive option.
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