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Card evolution: A bridge between plastic cards and mobile phones

April 30, 2014 by Kevin Christensen — Vice President, Audit, SHAZAM

Among the hundreds of new payment technologies popping up around the world, one in particular has caught my eye. Called Coin, it's a single plastic card that allows a consumer to load up to eight other cards.

As someone who hates carrying a wallet, this is a product I can see many consumers gravitating to as the industry hammers out the mobile wallet.

Payments industry innovation has come — and continues to come — in myriad formats. However, it's the developments that allow consumers to maintain their habits while using something new that I believe will ultimately achieve the greatest adoption. Coin does exactly that.

The last stat I heard was that the average consumer carries four credit cards. And that's just credit. It doesn't include debit cards, loyalty cards, membership cards, or identification cards.

It's quite the collection and makes for a fat, cumbersome brick to haul around. And if you're George Costanza, it might even explode.

As a consumer, I find Coin appealing. But as a community FI supporter, I'm not so sure. According to the developer of Coin, "If you build a product consumers love, everybody wins," but will that be true for issuers if consumers begin to love Coin?

Issuers invest a great deal of money and man-hours for the resources to make their card products stand out. Pursuing top wallet share is an expensive endeavor.

Coin and other Coin-like products could help or hurt in that regard. While the plain black card Coin produces carries only its logo (thus leaving yours out), the issuers' brands are somewhat in play on the smartphone app that manages Coin.

The technology is expected to be out by this summer. It will be interesting to see how consumers take up the product, how issuers' brands are allowed to play with the app, how merchants react, and what security and potential compliance concerns crop up.

View a demo of Coin:

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