Coin Card Delays Until Spring 2015 Upset Backers

If you’ve been waiting for news regarding Coin Card, then you’ve got a longer wait than expected. Coin launched with HUGE fanfare in November of 2013, promising to revolutionize your credit card by allowing you to combine up to 6 cards in one Bluetooth-enabled device. Launched on the same day as the revamped Google Wallet, Coin Card stole the show for a few months as news about the product gained momentum.

Commentators were skeptical though. Both CNN and the New York Times warned consumers of the risks associated with a non-PCI compliant card replacement, that also did not include security features required for merchant acceptance. The looming EMV issue was not yet an imperative in the US press, because this was pre-Target breach.

Clearly things have caught up with the Coin team. The latest news on their Facebook page has Coin’s release slipping to Spring of 2015, with still no public response to the switch to EMV requirements.

This delay has upset the backers who participated in the initial raise of funding for coin which was done as a kickstarter-type campaign on Coin’s website back in November.

The comments can be found on coin’s Facebook page, where the crowd-funding backers are clearly not pleased – OnlyCoin Facebook Page. Comments include the following:

• Been waiting since last October. Is there a procedure to ask for my money back?
• Get your money back while they’ll still honour it. EMV is coming, and coin won’t work by mid 2015 without major changes to the product announced (changes I’m not sure are possible without bank co-operation).
• Spring 2015 really? Just cant admit that these wont work because of the new embedded chip card standards, so we are gonna move the date back 6 months? They will be obsolete by then. Just fess up.
• $50 for a card that will work well for the next 15 months. That is until the EMV chips and EMV card readers are on the market. Coin what is the policy on backers whose cards won’t work when EMV is launched? Will Coin come out with an updated EMV card in 15 months or will the initial backers have to pay an extra $100 for a new EMV Coin card in 2015?
• Why there is not even 1 video on youtube about using coin card in real life from the “BACKERS” who test or what ever you call them, not even 1 video showing someone with coin beta test type or normal type that really did a purchase or atm withdrawal WHY?

Clearly the folks at Coin have their work cut out for them to recover from this. $15m in funding might be enough to refund their early backers, but the uncertainty around the future of Coin may be too much of a hurdle to surmount for the market, especially with the EMV rollout speeding up in the US.