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Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

Many credit card companies are starting to issue new cards which are completely flat, making it impossible to make imprint. My new CapitalOne card is an example of this. Is your company planning on refusing to do business with them?

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My girlfriend's family wanted to rent bikes at Blazing Saddles in SF and the cashiers there threw a big fit when they realized her card wasn't imprintable. They wouldn't photocopy it or write the number down, they just flat-out declined the business.

Their loss really.

It's both parties' loss.

Their loss of possibly getting chargebacked? Seems like a benefit.

No, their loss of the sale, obviously.

Everyone loses in this case. The card is supposed to facilitate a transaction and it failed to do so; the shop went without their money, the family went without their bikes, and all of the various financial institutions went without their cut.

Which is why the poster above is warning about this; if there will be merchants out there who won't accept it, it's pretty much DOA as you can't replace all the cards in your wallet with it.

That's partly what makes this idea such a great bet. It's a positive sign Coin evokes such magnitude of excitement and disbelief.

I recently used a temporary travel card at Blazing Saddles, and that wasn't imprintable but they didn't make any note of it. They may have changed their policies.

Off-topic, but they should have gone to http://thebikehut.org/ : the guys are lovely, the bikes are great, and you only need to give your name and passport number (that they don't even check) before renting a bike. That's right, no deposit. I paid by cash when I brought the bike back at the end of the day. Amazing trust.

Flat may be fine. However, from what I've seen in the video, the Coin is not only flat but also almost totally anonymized. The cashier would not be able to verify the name against a photo ID or even take a picture of the card. This would be possible with a non-imprintable card.

Unless required by local or state law, most major credit card companies prohibit the requirement of supplementary identification to complete a transaction.

With that said, they require verification of the signature on the back of the card with the one on the receipt / screen.

In the event that the card is not signed, you are then allowed to require identification and the card must be signed by the customer before it is used.

Except at the post office, which will outright refuse any card that is not signed.

Technically, the card isn't valid unless signed.

Most credit card companies prohibit the "See ID" that some people put on their cards in place a of a signature.

"See ID" is also a signature if done own handed. I've seen a court decision to the effect that you can declare your signature anything you write. Important is if _you_ accept it as such later on.

The importance is consistency and recognition as you point out.

But writing "See ID" on the back of the card and then using a completely different signature on the receipt is not acceptable as far as I know.

I dont sign my cards ever, why would I want a thief to see what my signature looks like?

Per the terms of the cardmember agreement that you agreed to, you are required to sign the back of the card. If you do not, you are not authorized to use the card for any transactions.

It's all very silly anyway given that online credit card transactions almost never require a signature.

Quite honestly though, once a thief has access to your card, you have other problems. If they're close enough to see it, they're likely close enough to duplicate it and leave you the card with you ever knowing.

If the signature is that concerning, then use one signature consistently for your credit card transactions that's unlike the one you use for anything else.

If you don't like that option, then you probably shouldn't be using credit cards currently offered.

Seems like you wouldn't get much use out of them then. I get asked for signature verification at least a few times a week.

Great. That way they can just sign it themselves. That way if a merchant does signature verification, it matches! And then when your CC company comes back and says "Chargeback is in dispute. The signature matches" you'll have to explain why you didn't follow the terms of the cardmember agreement.

Now, this is all very hypothetical for many reasons, but generally it's my practice to follow cardmember agreements that I am, after all, agreeing to follow.

How would the CC company know that the signature matched? At no point will the thief-signed card ever be sighted by anyone other than the merchant, briefly. The thief is going to dispose or destroy the card when they're finished with it; your bank/issuer is never going to see it to compare.

@Coin twitter confirmed that the coin card actually does have a signature field on the back that you would sign, so the vendor can use that to compare with your receipt. https://twitter.com/coin/statuses/401939329506746368

These are "electronic" credit cards, they've been around for years and they are flat so not to be usable for offline processing (that's when they take an imprint, you sign it, they take the imprint to the bank and it settles in a week).

Except that you can still use just the CC#, Name, and Expiry to authorize a purchase (both online and offline). I've done this at craft shows and such with vendors that didn't have mobile CC reader/app.

Hence why Square was invented...

> "for offline processing"

Agree, SUPER clever idea. I'm wondering how this would work to make purchases _online_. I know, I know. I'd use my real card. But it strikes me as ironic that the big idea for this digital card is that I don't have to carry my 'analog' cards around. Unless I want to make a digital purchase. Then I need my analog card.

Wouldn't you have the image of the card in your phone anyway? So, your analog card would still be in the drawer at home, just as before.

The lcd displays the CC# and the security code, all the info you would need to buy online. Don't even need to open the app! https://twitter.com/coin/statuses/401939329506746368

That's not how I read that tweet: just that it shows your name, signature and CVV. The video on their website appears to confirm that. Unless you've memorized your CC#s, you'll still have to pull out the real card when purchasing online... unless you can see the full photograph of the card in the mobile app. Which is still annoying, but at least better.

Imprint was just an example. You can take a picture of it, view the CVC, etc. No one imprints anymore.

How can you prove the pictures is the card and not just 'shopped though. With an imprint there's a larger barrier, creating an embossed card, doable but a barrier nonetheless.

With credit cards, unless there was a unique image on it then you'd often be able to guess from the number what the other card details should look like.

I'd argue that shopping a believable picture of a credit card that stands up to scrutiny is a higher barrier than the imprint - which really just involves some movable letters and carbon paper...

> No one imprints anymore.

that's not true at all; have you been outside of any major city in america?

As an avid road fan, I've been in 47 out of 50 states (no Hawaii, Alaska or Vermont) and roadtriped around 50.000 miles, in the course of 7 years.

I've stayed in hundrends of small cities, from Ogalala, NE to Ozona, TX and Oatman, AZ, and used my credit cards for all kinds of purchases, from Kroger and CVS, to outlet stores, gas, local shops, small eateries, fast food places, restaurants etc.

Never had a vendor inprint my card.

I had it happen at a Denny's in Oregon, and not because the electricity or phone lines were down, but because that's just how they processed cards.

Imprinting happens a lot at hotel check-ins, in my experience. They will often imprint your card onto their copy of the check-in document.

Yeah, it's a low-end version of a pre-authorization. If the room is already paid for in advance, and you have no extra charges, they can just shred that imprint.

It still happens. I had it happen at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Nebraska or South Dakota (where he probably didn't have internet) as well as at a gas station in a bigger town where their internet was out.

I was under the impression a lot of swipe machines used plain old phone lines. No?

Older ones did. Newer ones tend to run over the internet. They don't tie up a phone line at either end of the connection, and the information transfer is much quicker, so in most circumstances it works better for everyone.

Have you never been in a cab in a major city?

Had my own car for the trips, but have used cabs for convenience in Chicago and NY. I usually pay cabs in cash though (probably because I never think of cabs as accepting cards, thinking by my country's norms).

None of the taxis in any major city I've been in lately take imprints either; they have the normal card-swipe machines that retail businesses have.

It's been a shift in the last few years. They're rare now.

I have at least a dozen in the past 6 months from Taxi/limos in various US states and Canadian provinces, and a couple from road diners.

Better to ask, have you been _outside_ America. For I presume, in most countries who adopted CCs fairly recently, the concept of 'offline transaction' is entirely foreign.

Not true a lot of small mom and pop stores who are not that electrically savvy still do take an imprint.

Yesterday Apple's in-store POS/easypay was down and employees were doing manual imprints. It's rare but does occasionally happen.

My Discover Card is like this as well. Totally flat, no ability to imprint.

From this thread I learned that there was some purpose to making in not flat. It's even sillier than the credit card itself.

Yes, all mine are completely flat at this point as well. I assume all credit card issuers are rolling this out.

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