Not About Elio, But Spooky Close

[Johnny Acree]

I just read about a company who's story is spooky close to Elio. They had a product that many people thought it was a good idea and they wanted one. they did not have a competitor, in fact the product would work with others in the space. They just needed funding.

 

[Gas-Powered Awesome]

Plastc was using new technology to create something that has never existed. Elio is (we hope) creating a new version of something that has already existed, with existing technology and many existing parts. Not close at all, IMHO. Except for the part about taking customer's money and not delivering a product...

 

[Rob Croson]

Plastc had funding. $9M worth of funding.

They also had a competitor: Coin. (Among others, I think Stratus was one.) Coin managed to ship a small number of cards prior to suddenly selling themselves and getting shut down by their new owner.

Plastc had the same problem as others in the payment space (such as Coin): By the time they got their magnetic stripe tech to work, the credit card companies started moving on to chip payments. Some of the few people that received their cards reported that the card didn't really work as advertised, because they still needed to carry the original card for those situations where the point of sale demanded a chip transaction. That's why Coin bowed out quickly, and sold themselves and their technology to Fitbit, who immediately shut them down. And now MasterCard is working on fingerprint technology in cards as well.

Plastc's problem (and Coin's, too), is that they were trying to solve a problem that no one truly has: carrying around too many magstripe cards. How many people are to pay $155 to be able to carry one card around instead of 20? How many people really have 20 cards they want to not carry? And how many of those people are going to want to pay even more money in another 5 years when the credit card companies change technology again, making that nifty Plastc card worthless?

Plastc was around for a couple years, but never even managed to produce a prototype of their card. Just some CGI videos of how cool their system was going to be. It's not surprising that their last ditch funding efforts failed. Their system didn't support chip technology. How many places do you go now that accept swipes, rather than demanding chip transactions? Their "new" technology was already obsolete.

 

[Johnny Acree]

OH! I did not know all that. All I know is what is in the article.

 

[Ty]

Plastc had funding. $9M worth of funding.

They also had a competitor: Coin. (Among others, I think Stratus was one.) Coin managed to ship a small number of cards prior to suddenly selling themselves and getting shut down by their new owner.

Plastc had the same problem as others in the payment space (such as Coin): By the time they got their magnetic stripe tech to work, the credit card companies started moving on to chip payments. Some of the few people that received their cards reported that the card didn't really work as advertised, because they still needed to carry the original card for those situations where the point of sale demanded a chip transaction. That's why Coin bowed out quickly, and sold themselves and their technology to Fitbit, who immediately shut them down. And now MasterCard is working on fingerprint technology in cards as well.

Plastc's problem (and Coin's, too), is that they were trying to solve a problem that no one truly has: carrying around too many magstripe cards. How many people are to pay $155 to be able to carry one card around instead of 20? How many people really have 20 cards they want to not carry? And how many of those people are going to want to pay even more money in another 5 years when the credit card companies change technology again, making that nifty Plastc card worthless?

Plastc was around for a couple years, but never even managed to produce a prototype of their card. Just some CGI videos of how cool their system was going to be. It's not surprising that their last ditch funding efforts failed. Their system didn't support chip technology. How many places do you go now that accept swipes, rather than demanding chip transactions? Their "new" technology was already obsolete.

My Coin was only $50 and solved a couple of problems... One, the waiter is not able to make a quick impression of the numbers on my card by rubbing a receipt on it and thus stealing my card info... Coin only ever showed the last 4 digits. In addition, if I ever left my Coin behind, it would lock as soon as it got too far away from my phone. If my phone died, I could easily unlock my Coin by pressing the button in kind of Morse code. I was traveling with an inspection team and the team didn't always go to the best establishments around and I felt better handing them a card they could do nothing with. I could also keep all the airlines, hotels, and car rental cards on it. Unfortunately, with the government mandating use of chips in all their cards (my gov. travel card is one for instance), it is just a matter of time before all magnetic stripe cards go away completely. Not to mention, paying by phone is much better in several ways (they generate a temporary card number for each transaction which is only good for a single transaction) and you receive instant notification if it is used to make payment. Coin realized their time was limited and sold Fitbit their wearable payment platform and then they closed their doors.



The coin was interesting... a screen, battery, button, NFC, Bluetooth... all in something exactly the size of a credit card... still amazing to me. While they developed a product that rapidly become overcome by events, the technology is pretty darn snazzy... and while I still can, I'll use that card and when people see the screen change to the card I want to use, it never fails to impress. RIP COIN.

 

[Johnny Acree]

The spooky part for me is how they were working diligently behind the scenes to raise funding to bring the product to market. Right up till it was all over.

 

[Rob Croson]

Coin did look interesting, I'll grant that. I didn't hear about it until right after they stopped shipping their limited number of initial units. You were lucky to get one! Coin was $50, but I understand that the Plastc pre-orders were $155. I don't know if that was a pre-order discount. There is at least one platform still chasing the all-in-one payment platform. I read about it yesterday, but forget the name. Supposedly their upcoming release will support the EMV (?) chip as well as NFC and magstripe. Not sure how, or if, they will react once the card companies start including fingerprint readers in their cards. MasterCard is already testing it, I think. I saw an article about that yesterday, too.