“Coin", The New Credit Card Replacement

A California based start-up has developed "Coin", a small device as the size of a credit card can bring up to eight cards in one, leaving it to the user to change the map to the environment through a single button. The announcement last week has not gone unnoticed by man. The California start-up Coin has finalized the development of his first-born, a device that of the size of a credit card that aims to drastically reduce the volume of your wallet by replacing up to eight credit cards, membership cards, gifts or any other type of cards with a magnetic strip.

Named as “Coin" and also developed map by the young company based in San Francisco leaves his happy owner the opportunity to move from one card to another by pressing a single circular button located on top of the card. Once selected, “Coin" functions as the cards it proposes to replace, either in an ATM or in an electronic payment terminal or any suitable type of player. The secret lies in its Coin tape - whose patent is being filed - a tape whose contents change at will.

The unit comes with a small reader that plugs into the audio port (via a jack ) for scanning the cards information migrate to the mobile application "Coin", which then synchronizes with the card via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE or Wibree). Created by the Finnish Nokia, this protocol allows wireless transmission rate equivalent to Bluetooth (1Mb / s) for 10 times less energy consumption, and is currently the heyday of Smart watches or other activity trackers.

Battery of the Coin lasts at least for a range of almost two years (according to the details provided by the developers), and feeds a small screen that displays the last four digits of the card that you choose to use, and the date of validity and the visual cryptogram . The man behind Coin decided to embark on this adventure by analyzing the critical success of “SquareReader " means a device to convert any Smartphone payment terminal with a card reader and a mobile application.

Rather than working on a system that accepts many payment cards, they chose to play the duality trying to develop a map that meets all. The premise seemed exciting enough to entice some of the brains of Silicon Valley, combining their talents to develop a prototype worthy of the name.

The designers quickly rallied behind the idea of a single button used to activate both the tape to move from one card to another and display the data on the card chosen to avoid any possibility of confusion. They also set eight cards to limit, although the soft underbelly “Coin " is quite able to swallow more. The team took the view that the majority of potential users do not have more than eight cards, and navigation through a higher number of cards would be uncomfortable and would fall within the challenge.

The team itself reassuring regarding the protection of data as sensitive as those stored in a credit card, arguing that many companies already have full access to your bank account without the security of them is threatened. "The copy of the information contained in your credit card is not otherwise illegal , since it is your own information ," says , trying to sweep a backhand doubts about the actual safety of the device and the possibilities for fraud.

The data is encrypted on the Smartphone and the map "Coin" , but become useless if the contact between the phone and the card - via the BLE protocol - is broken more than a few minutes , the exact number of minutes yet to be determined. Finally, the use of the transmission protocol has the advantage of allowing the sending of an alert when the communication between the two devices is interrupted, for example if the user goes to a trade forgetting his card.