Protean Echo – Fuse All Your Cards into One | Hacker News Reader

Protean Echo – Fuse All Your Cards into One

getprotean.com

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Is this really a problem? Too many credit cards make your wallet uncomfortably large? Let's get back to solving problems that matter. I can't believe we have three companies on the front page today reducing the number of credit cards in your wallet.

Actually, I might have this problem. I don't use a lot of credit, but I carry around a primary CC, a backup CC (that is never used unless the primary CC is stolen), a corporate CC, four debit cards for various accounts, and a myriad of other things.

My kingdom for a solution that gets me down to one card.

Why do you need to carry around four debit cards and a backup credit card? I'm not saying this works for everyone but my wallet contains $20, a driver's license, and a credit card.

If I'm going to be somewhere where I might need a business CC or debit card then they're temporarily added. Otherwise I store all my CC info in 1password anyway which I can access on my phone.

I carry a debit card, a credit card, and a joint account card.

My problem is the 15 loyalty cards I'd need to carry to get my free mocha/chicken/subway/points/etc/etc, give me an amalgamation of that shit and I'll love you for ever.

One example of a mobile app solution is [1], a low-tech solution is [2].

[1]: http://www.keyringapp.com/

[2]: http://lifehacker.com/5719587/make-your-own-consolidated-loy...

I carry three: two Amex cards and a debit card. The Amexes are for different cashback situations and one of them is a Costco membership card too so I have to carry both. I would actually like to add a backup Visa or MasterCard as well since lots of places do not accept Amex.

I have the Costco Amex too, but how often are you going to Costco that you're carrying it around everyday?

I don't think having a backup CC on the same card would help if your card is stolen.

It's a different CC account: I just don't take it out for use unless my primary one is out of commission.

Couldn't agree more. 10 products launching on HN today to solve convenience issues so you can pay for your $7 croissant and decaf soy milk latte with vegan cinnamon and not be forced to carry around 4 credit cards. Good god.

It is not a problem I have, but from looking at the responses on HN it seems there is interest. If there is a viable solution and market demand, why not?

One card to rule them all ;)

And in the adware bind them!

I'm pretty sure the others were posted in response to Coin. I'm also entirely uncomfortable with the notion that some problems are less real than others. Problems will have different levels of severity, but one problem doesn't invalidated another.

This is true. And to clarify, my true gripe is with a mismatch of talent and what I believe to be problem severity. "Is this really a problem" was casual language.

This is what I thought. I have two cards (my main one isn't able to withdraw cash but the other is) and it's not a hassle with up to 4 cards if you have a decent wallet.

I have more and use them to budget. For instance: One card for groceries, one for large items, one for food, one for business.

Things like mint hasn't worked out for me so I do it this way, very easy at the end of the month to see where I've moved off the budget to adjust.

I'd like one card and a thinner wallet.

Combine this with something like BoA's ShopSafe "disposable" credit card numbers and POS credit card fraud could be practically eliminated. Consumer privacy would also be increased because it will become much more difficult to cross-reference purchases across different merchants. (You'll still have to worry about Visa selling your purchase records, but one step at a time.)

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abu/y205/m02/abu0137/s02

Are there any other companies / banks that have this disposable credit card concept? I know paypal had it years back, but I haven't seen any surface since then.

I know Citi Bank has a disposable credit card number feature though their website. You had to log into your credit card account to use it.

Disposable credit card numbers in the USA? Inconceivable! An actually secure feature that is widespread in Europe found its way into the US? What has the world come to.

Any Canadian implementations?

PayPal started offering virtual one-time-use MasterCard cards linked to your PayPal balance in 2004.

but they stopped offering them years ago.

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Extras-MasterCard...

Discover Card offered it in the early 2000s, discontinued it in 2011, but recently brought it back.

They're not new, it's just that the ease of disputing fraudulent charges combined with the low incidence of fraud made them mostly superfluous.

It is probably the same company behind both the euro and the us implementations. They were called Orbiscom out of Ireland, Mastercard bought them a few years back.

http://www.mastercard.com/us/company/en/newsroom/orbiscom.ht...

@Amadou you could directly message the authors on their kickstarter page or their contact page, with that issue.

@HN @pg Is it an ethical requirement, or is there any obligation, that we as submitters have to inform page owners about their site being submitted on HN? Wouldn't it be very very useful to be able to get some kind of "subscription", that informs page owners about their product/site/idea/blog being posted on HN? Hey maybe even worth thinking about this as a business-model? I sometimes feel that I should've informed the page owner, about the load that's going to come, before their page get's DDoSSed, bu5 I's impossible to predict that, without the data you have in the HN 'backends'.

These guys have been around much longer than Coin. I think this goes to show how much hype being part of YC can generate.

Kudos to both products.

Also, https://walla.by/the-wallaby-card - they have been around even longer.

I've been using Wallaby for a while (the company I used to work at invested in them).

They're really awesome.

I haven't used Coin or Echo for comparison, though.

I think Wallaby works differently by being a new plastic card you use and they dynamically route your charges to which ever registered card will give you the best return (cash back, airline points, etc).

13% of Americans have 10 or more credit cards? Wow, that sounds serious.

They should probably pass on the Protean Echo purchase, and figure out how to manage their money better.

More credit lines give you a higher credit score. Yes it has relatively low impact, but the more lines you have, the better it is for your credit score. That's just the system.

I only have one. My credit is excellent. I've never had a problem with anything.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but clearly it isn't the only way.

Like I said, it's a low impact factor, but it still is. And I'm not saying this is "my experience" it's just one of the factors.

Also credit lines could be anything from retail credit, mortgage, car loan etc. All apply.

Compared to paying every month, utilization, past default etc. it's a low factor, but it still is.

Not really. Every request from a credit provider is a hard request negatively impacting your score in most formulas. Providers not checking your score do not affect it anyways (improving it or making it worse).

Plus it is harder to manage debt, adding risk of defaults and fraud operations.

I would agree that it is harder to manage debt. I suggest not having any debt in that case.

And yes, hard requests negatively impact your score more than say having 10 lines of credit would positively impact your score. Hard requests do not last as long as credit lines though.

Does this (low impact) factor suggest that you request to get a new card every month? No. I think the top range (for credit lines) is 15-22. Going above that would not affect your score any more positively. I think it's ridiculous but that's what it's become.

The more you borrow (or technically "can borrow") the more lines you'll be able to get.

You do have to watch out for a bad "income to potential debt" ratio. Having a ton of open accounts (even if with $0 balances) can be a bad thing. You have the potential to go wild one weekend and find yourself with a ton of maxed out cards. Some lenders are not keen on that either.

I'd bet a significant percentage of those are store cards taken out for discounts. In case they don't do this in your country, retailers here often offer credit cards that:

- offer instant, in-store acceptance

- have no annual fees

- give you discounts when used at the store

So when you checkout at e.g. J.Crew, they might say "hey, if you take 5 minutes and apply for a J.Crew card, we'll knock $50 off your purchase right now."

I came to USA 4 years ago and already accumulated probably 15-20 cards. Few of these are store-credit-cards (Kohls and Target) but others are just regular ones.

Reason is simple - more credit cards - better credit score in the long run (it ruins your credit score in the very beginning tho)

I am using 3-4 daily depending on current rewards and perks and never carry balance (and as a result, never pay interest.) Like I put electronics on my AMEX simply because these purchases are auto-protected from accidents for 90 days. I put gas purchases on card having 5% cash back on gas stations, etc.

As additional bonus - I put not used cards into glovebox of each of my car and in case I forget/loose my wallet, I still have mean of payment with me.

So you get a heap of credit cards to make it easier to get more credit (cards)?

Or to buy a house.

In my case I was working on my credit history to secure home mortgage. I had to wait 2 years till banks want to talk about mortgage with me (i had no credit history before coming to US) and I used this time to build up it.

Amex also doubles the manufacturer's standard warranty, so purchasing Apple gear with Amex is a no-brainer, two years of warranty, means I don't necessarily need to pay for the extended Apple Care warranty.

Amex is also exceptionally good when it comes to working with customers on its warranty stuff, mostly no questions asked which means there is almost no hassle compared to some of the other insurance plans offered by other companies.

Visa and Mastercard do this as well. I've had one device fail with with little pushback from MC/Visa and also had two accidents (not my fault) with rentals overseas, covered.

I suspect that this statistic is true and not true depending on how you look at the numbers.

I have two credit cards, but when I pull my credit report, something like 8 credit cards come up. The other 6 have been closed long ago, and now they're listed as "account closed". But for a long time, they were listed as open accounts even though I no longer even had the cards. I had to call several times to get the account closure properly listed.

I suspect many people, over their lives, change from card to card as new deals are offered (50,000 free miles!), with varying velocity, but most people probably don't bother to call and insist that their credit report get fixed when these old cards aren't officially listed as "account closed".

Wow... what a shitty, judgmental thing to say. Having 10 credit cards does not equal poor money management. Having 10 maxed out credit cards with a crap load of debt might be. Your credit rating might suffer a little by having a bad "income to potential debt" ratio, even if you have $0 balance on every card and always make your payments on time... but just having a bunch of cards is not the issue.

When two dynamic magstripe products appear on the front page of HN, I just had to find out how it works.

Protean provided a link on the front page FAQ but unfortunately that link doesn't work, so here's the working how-it-works entry[1] and a history of reprogrammable card technologies[2] from their blog. The "magstripe" is essentially an electromagnet that is able to sense the reader's swipe head and start the "playback" along the entire track. If you'd like to build a simple one, you just need to playback a waveform into a coil placed at the swipe head [3].

And regarding their answer on the card skimming bit, it's most likely just a form of software protection. If they can so easily duplicate a card's magstripe, what's stopping anyone from being able to do it (with their product)?

I would definitely buy one though.

[1] http://blog.getprotean.com/?p=124

[2] http://blog.getprotean.com/?p=396

[3] http://hackaday.com/2008/08/04/magnetic-stripe-card-spoofer/

"Q: Will Echo facilitate card skimming?

A: No. Echo users can only mimic payment cards (debit and credit) registered under their name. Sorry skimmers!"

I'd like to hear more about how this card is designed not to allow skimmers to use it. My suspicion is that the app will, in fact, be easy enough for skimmers to hack so that they can put anyone's card they want on it, turning it into a pocket skimmer for waiters or anyone who can get their hands on a customer's card for a few seconds.

"Q: What happens if I lose Echo? Is it secure?

A: Yes, Echo is secure. You can set Echo Card to lock down when out of range of your mobile app. "

Again, more information would be nice. Is card data stored in encrypted form and decrypted only at the moment of use via a key provided by the app? If so, are keys securely broadcast to the card? Is card info uploaded to the echo card securely for that matter? This is important to ask, since you might wind up transmitting card data on a public channel repeatedly.

There are some pretty big cryptographic concerns here that are completely glossed over. I absolutely would not use this card without knowing more.

Well, if you lose your credit card, it's all right there and unencrypted, readable with any card reader. Any level of additional security is strictly an improvement, though granted this would be losing three credit cards at once.

To answer your first question, I gather they would be grabbing the name hard-coded in your mag stripe. Can't use multiple cards with different names.

Unless the software that enforces this is compromised. If the iPhone can be jailbroken by hobbyists, you can bet there will be resources greater than the Protean dev team devoted to hacking this device to bypass their checks.

Credit card skimming is big money. A cheap, innocuous device like this could be very interesting.

Do virtual cards like these know when they've been swiped through a card reader? What if they allowed only one swipe when you're ready to make a payment? That way, if someone tries to skim the card, you'd get an alert like "hey, you just gave your card to somebody and it was read twice before they gave it back to you."

Of course, there are a situations where a multi-swipe would be legit, like the register doesn't read the card correctly the first time, or you make a last minute purchase ("you know, I think we will have dessert after all").

Maybe the card could detect the level of perspiration on the swiper's hand and buzz your phone if they seem nervous.

Wait, isn't this exactly the same as "Coin" which got a lot of buzz today?

It's interesting to see two similar projects come out around the same time. Is there some new technology that only makes this possible now?

This one was announced in August 2012. Several others have tried the same thing over the past few years.

It already seems obsolete as it won't work with chip cards. Most POS debit and credit transactions in Canada are now done via chip-cards, so emulating a magstripe isn't helpful.

Debit cards: http://www.interac.ca/images/PDFs/interac%20infograph_ENG_FI...

Europe has been doing that for years!

I'm sure there are going to be plenty of places which refuse to accept anything but an actual credit or debit card.

I mean, there's no signature to check. What do you do when 10% or more of the places you go refuse to take this?

Heck, a lot of places used to require the cashier to type in the last 4 digits of the card visually, to make sure the physical card matched the stripe. I haven't seen that in a while, but that would also be impossible with this.

Are the credit-card companies on board with this, instructing retailers to accept these?

Best Buy still requires the physical card to type in the first four numbers ...

First four? That's two-thirds of the Bank Identification Number ( BIN ), offers no security at all. After all the bank's logo is plastered over the card and reverse BIN lookup is easy.

What an odd thing to capture.

I might be mistaken, but they are required to type in 4 numbers, last time I asked the clerk he said it was the first 4 numbers...

"Q: When will Echo be available?

A: A year ago, we estimated a 2013 availability. We’re still working on perfecting the technology. We haven’t released a revised availability date."

I'm all for several kinds of these things, just as we have different kinds of watches and phones. It's a matter of taste more than anything once the basics are established, as they clearly are. And, of course, of getting it to market. Hopefully the Coin I preordered today isn't still in preproduction a year from now.

I like that this works with loyalty cards too. Unfortunately my early beta card got destroyed after the fifth or sixth time I took it to the Pizza Hut buffet and had them punch it.

Interesting to see them in the same space. I wonder if someone makes the 'dark' version of this card, connected via your phone to carding networks dynamically becomes a stolen ATM card for you to get cash quickly and then deletes the data after use. Leaving you with only cash and the disguise you used to hide from the ATM camera.

Well at least that is what I think the bad guys are thinking right now.

Well isn't this awkward with coin and all…

Is it? Not sure, but the Coin team went gangbusters on the promotion and it seems to have worked great for them. I couldn't visit any social site today without someone talking about Coin. But I've a feeling that payment cards are far from a winner-take-all business.

The Protean Echo, OTOH, has been in development for some time. Thiago first gave me the demo at the Tech Brewery in Ann Arbor, MI and it blew the doors off anything we'd ever seen that was remotely similar. The form factor of the card itself — clear “Gorilla glass”, like the iPhone screen, with embedded circuits — and the whole user experience are beautiful. I just wish they'd hurry up and release it!

Guess they should have made a video, like Coin

For fun you can even scan friends cards.

I actually don't want a card. Or a wallet. I'd like my keys and phone and wallet to merge into one blob. This would cause my "oh s$%t I lost X" anxiety to go from 3 points, to 1 point.

Would you then hand your cards/keys/phone blob to a waiter at at a restaurant when you pay for your meal?

The problem I have with this, is that its greatest strength is also its single point of failure. One card to rule them all, and one card to lose them all.

well, not quite "all", looks like this one has a limit of 3 cards at a time on the Echo card, where the Coin has a limit of 8 at a time.

More or less:

"Q: Echo mimics just 3 cards?

A: No. Echo mimics an unlimited number of cards with the help of our free mobile app - simply drag and drop any card you’d like Echo to mimic within the app."

It sounds like you'll have to launch the app to change which three cards are stored on the Echo. This is actually too low of a number for me, so it would end up being more of a hassle to launch the app all the time than it would be to just carry 5 cards everywhere.

Coin does the exact same thing except with 8 at a time.

I declare today to be "Merge All Your Cards Into One" day.

the CEO is pretty legit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiago_David_Olson

Man that's so trendy now ;-)

this is a parody site right?

Your card looks sexier than the coin one (to me!). And suddenly we have two competing hot-shots in a day that would bring out the best in each other. Wish you guys and the coin guys ALL THE BEST! Screw all the naysayers, go prove the world really needs lesser cards to carry!

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