Pay With Coin: New Device Lets You Leave Credit Cards at Home

November 15, 2024         By: Kevin Xu

Paying with change may be a thing of the past but some day soon, you might be paying with a Coin.

Despite the name, it’s nothing similar to the pieces of metal rattling in your pocket. This Coin is a new attempt to reinvent the wheel. It’s a credit card like device that has technology to store up to 8 payment cards and consolidate them into a single magnetic stripe compatible card.

Coin is a startup founded by Kanishk Parashar, and is backed by Y Combinator. It has recently launched a crowd funding initiative. Those who want to snag a Coin (or several) can preorder for $50, with an expected arrival in summer of 2014. Otherwise, it’ll be $100 each when it finally hits retail.

The process for actually storing and using Coin involves a smartphone. The user must take a picture of their payment card with their cellphone and then swipe the cards through the headphone jack dongle. This information is transferred to the Coin smartphone app, which has no limit on the number of payment cards it can hold. There needs to be a connection between Coin and the smartphone with Bluetooth LE. The smartphone then syncs up to 8 payment cards to the Coin, which the user chooses at the POS.

Paying with Coin is exactly like paying with a debit/credit card. Except now, the user has a choice to scroll through and accept which card they wish to pay with before swiping, or handing it off to a server.

Of course, being based on magnetic stripe technology, Coin won’t be compatible with EMV-chipped cards for now. There are also some security concerns, such as what happens if the Coin device is handed off to a server and they accidentally change your selected card, or worse yet, it gets lost or stolen.

Coin claims that it’s designed to minimize the chance of accidental presses. Also, Coin will deactivate itself when the link between it and the smartphone is broken after a set time.

Coin is one of a number of hot hardware startups focused on bringing mobile payments to the consumer. However, Coin is one of the few, if not only ones, to combine mobile while satisfying the U.S.’s addiction to card swipes and fat wallets.