Coin is a single card that stores all credit, debit, gift, membership or loyalty card data in one place:
Coin looks and works exactly like a credit or a debit card. You add your card information to it using the mobile app and a free accessory they provide. You connect the accessory to your phone and then swipe your current cards through it. The accessory transfers the card data to the phone app and saves it there. Then you take a photo of the card to help you identify it. The app then transfers the card data to the Coin. The app can hold an unlimited number of card data but Coin itself can store up to eight.
Ross Rubin calls Coin a “pricey convenience for those who carry many cards”:
Coin would appear to be convenient, or at least trade a bit of button manipulation for bulk, but its developers plan to sell it for $100 after a deep-discount preorder phase ends. And once you buy it, you’ll have to keep paying. While Coin doesn’t have a subscription fee, its nonrechargeable battery expires after two years, creating an effective cost of about $50 per year. What if Coin is gobbled up by an ATM and not released?
Christopher Mims says that it “sounds like a great idea … until you realize that … your ability to pay for anything becomes entirely dependent on the battery life of your smartphone”:
In those odd moments that you find yourself with a dead phone battery, it ceases to function. That might not happen so often, but think of the times it might, and how they’re precisely those moments you would most want your credit cards to function: Late at night, when you need to pay a cab, tow truck, restaurant bill, or whatever else you need to get you back to a place where you can charge your phone again.
Will Oremus fails to see this as a “fatal” drawback:
People are already so reliant on their phones that they’re terrified of letting the battery run low. If you want a safeguard, why not keep just one physical credit card in your wallet as insurance? … To me, the only real problem with Coin is that it feels like a stopgap technology, like those CD-changer cartridges that were popular for a little while before everyone switched to mp3s. Replacing eight cards with one may lighten your load by an ounce or two, but is that enough to convince people to take the leap of faith involved in adopting a new payment system? Even early adopters could be forgiven for holding out for a more comprehensive digital wallet—the kind that will let you pay for everything just by tapping your phone, or perhaps some other, even more seamless gesture.
Lauren DeLisa Coleman writes that while “for now, Coin is the coolest payment gadget available,” it’s “not the only company focused on innovating payment”:
In fact, banks are eager to move beyond magnetic strip cards into secure chip cards. “The primary security problem with cards in the U.S. is that it’s easy to capture and replay the contents of the [magnetic] stripe. When done by criminals, this is called skimming,” says Paul Kocher, President and Chief Scientist at Cryptography Research Inc. (CRI), a San Francisco-based R&D security company. “Coin is essentially doing the same thing, but for the cardholder’s benefit. … The U.S. will be rolling out chip cards soon in preparation for transaction liability rule changes in 2015, and Coin won’t work with the new cards.”
The Dish 