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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I had the beta and a final Coin and neither one were reliable enough to to trust. You HAVE to carry backup cards which more or less defeats the purpose. Then there is the slightly embarrassing, extremely annoying "Your card didn't work/Do you have another card this one isn't swiping". I've stopped carrying my coin altogether because if you have the cards you might as well use the real ones (I tried for 7+ months to use coin first).

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This was my experience too. It simply has to work 100% of the time, and unfortunately doesn't. Actually wrote this up just yesterday:

Coin: The product that had to be perfect. http://willd.me/posts/coin-the-product-that-had-to-be-perfec...

Agreed. The coin absolutely failed me. It didn't work far too often for me and I always had to carry backup cards (my debit card because BofA's ATM can't read it, and my credit card because I still want my rewards on purchases when my Coin fails). Needing to carry 3 cards completely defeated the purpose of the Coin, and I ended up ditching the Coin just to have one less card in my wallet. The irony.

They probably didn't have the ability to test it on nearly enough readers, given that there are literally thousands. They may also be running into some timing issues based on how people swipe. Those are things you sometimes just can't work out barring wide scale testing and adoption.

Right. But file this away in the "not my problem" draw. You can make all the excuses you want, but this is ultimately up to them to resolve, not for the consumer to deal with.

A comment here indicates that it simply won't work at a bunch of retailers:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/general/off-topic/coin-vs-pl...

A quick search confirms the caveat:

https://support.onlycoin.com/hc/en-us/articles/204413864-Whe...

(first link noted from a previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9879699 )

The concept is inherently flawed. Never mind changes in the payment infrastructure—the cool factor has apparently outweighed engineering challenges.

This is a (probably less severe) variation of the problem that iCache [1] had. The dynamic magnetic stripe tech was immature then, but mostly, it's just really difficult to put a computer in a thin (read: flexible) object that people are used to abusing. Then consider the need for near-perfect reliability next to the promoted benefit of not carrying other cards, and you're screwed.

1. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1404403369/geode-from-i...

Even worse, I've had servers flat out refuse to accept it. I couldn't even imagine opening a tab at a bar with it either: It looks too fake to be taken as collateral, and I don't know if the magnetic strip still works if the card is locked, meaning I would have to have another round-trip interaction with the bartender.

I've actually been meaning to try google wallet (pretty much everywhere visa/mc tap to pay and apple pay are available too) for some time, and just never think to do it... when I saw the coin card, I thought it was an interesting idea, but to be honest, I think having something along with your phone is probably more useful, since anyone with a coin card is likely to also have their phone.

Ditto - great idea - just never works reliably

Possibly letting me leave 1 or 2 cards at home is not really a great idea.

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