Bigserver1

I guess I'm just not convinced that the US will be Chip only by the end of 2015. I'll be pretty surprised actually if it doesn't take years to fully phase out swiping cards.

AllieKat

I agree 100% but coin is useless long before that point. If your coin doesn't work with 75% of your cards at 10% of places you shop that's enough to make it basically useless.

Bigserver1

That could be the case. Hoping it's not because I hate carrying a wallet. I figure at least I'll get 16 months out of it. That would be worth the $50, and maybe by then we'll all actually pay for everything with our phones.

AllieKat

You won't. You already can't use it at most Walmarts, many Zumiez, and a few other places. How many places does it need to be rejected for it to be useless to you?

For me the answer is "only a few" - because really, if you have to carry your cards anyway to pay at the places it is rejected, is it saving you anything to carry? Not at all.

EMV should be widely deployed by the end of first quarter 2015. Some more routing stuff will be solidified, Target has committed to end of this year, etc. Very few people will even see one of these before it is basically useless.

Even 5% of merchants having EMV enabled will be enough to render this pointless, since you'll still need all your cards for those merchants.

tmiw

No response today from the Coin people. I have no idea what their typical response time is or if there's anyone even reading those emails. It's pretty late in the game though so if I don't get a refund before they ship out then I guess I have a nifty gift card holder.

Bigserver1

You can't swipe a card at Walmart? I don't shop there so I can't speak from experience. Same with Zumiez, but I do at Target, and every time I'm there I swipe my card.

I guess my skepticism with some merchants not taking stripe cards is in the fact that my Amex cards, debit card and a couple of other CCs I have don't have chips, nor have I heard any communication from those companies about redeploying new cards with chips added. I feel like this process will take too long for merchants to not accept cards without EMV, at least for a while during the transitional period (all of 2015 at least, it seems).

TerryK

Many Walmart have EMV enabled POS now. For those POS, swipes will be rejected if you have a chip card. Swipe still works at Walmart if you have non-chip cards.

AllieKat

You can swipe a card without a chip, but not a card with a chip. That's one of the main security features of EMV.

Your Amex will have a chip when replaced.

Bigserver1

Just got my email. What's available now is apparently still "beta" and will only work 85% of the time. If you want the finished product, you wait until spring 2015. No word on whether spring 2015's final version will support EMV.

I have been a strong supporter of coin, but this sucks. Debating now whether or not I'll even claim mine or if I'll just try to get refunded.

sdsearch

You've got swiping of swipe-only cards and swiping of chip cards confused.

At Walmart, you can't swipe a chip card. You can only swipe a swipe-only (non-chip) card.

Most merchants will not stop taking swipe-only cards for quite some time. But banks will keep decreasing the number of swipe-only cards they issue. So more and more often the card you get (as you apply for new cards, or get updated versions of about-to-expire existing cards) will have chips on them, and those cards will no longer be able to swiped at chip-enabled terminals.

When I get chip cards, there's no advance notification. Suddenly the card I get in the mail is a chip card, when the previous one wasn't.

Now, some banks are slower to chip cards than others, so without knowing "what's in our wallet" (and Cap One is one of the slowest banks, btw, for moving to chip cards), I can't even begin to speculate when your cards will move to EMV.

AllieKat

That's the other issue. The stripe coin produces won't read on some readers. That is unrelated to EMV. IF they fix that it won't be before EMV gains critical mass. It isn't a viable product.

tmiw

Hmm, I just got the claim email too. Should I just tell them to cancel the refund?

EDIT: on second thought, no. From http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/22/60...ipe#252524980:

jacobsta811

Even if EMV chips kill this as a credit card replacement, it still has a lot of use in other places that will never go EMV. How many store loyalty cards, subway/bus/train cards, gift cards, etc are mag stripe cards ? As long as they don't stop you from putting those on your coin, it still has use for me. It would have even more use if they would make the display e-ink and high res enough to display a QR code/bar code - then it would replace all the loyalty cards on my keychains or in my wallet.

kebosabi

I'm surprised at all the discussion going on at the link about EMV!

AllieKat

One thing I found odd was the fact he said they had one with the potential to send a unique code - similar to contactless magnetic stripe data. Makes me wonder if they're manipulating the stripe, including possibly changing the service code since they insist EMV cards will work on it. And if they are, why are banks not declining the transactions?