Skip to main content

Coin announces Coin 2.0 with NFC, faster display, thinner design, more

Screen Shot 2015-08-25 at 9.18.11 PM

Coin, the company behind the innovative electronic card that aimed to consolidate your wallet into a single card, has today announced the 2.0 version of its offering. The first iteration of Coin began shipping in April 2015 and anyone who owns the first generation of the product is eligible for a free upgrade to Coin 2.0. Coin 2.0 includes a variety of enhancements, most important of which comes with the addition of NFC.

Coin 2.0 ships with NFC technology in “Early Access Mode,” which means the feature will work at a variety of retailers, but not all locations until partnerships to enable EMV compatibility are finalized. When those partnerships are established, over-the-air updates will be available. Contactless EMV is the same technology that is already used by Apple Pay and Android Pay, which makes it very easy for Coin 2.0 to be accepted at a variety of retailers.

Other features of Coin 2.0 include the ability to give payment cards a 4-character nickname, an improved electronic stripe, a display that is two times as fast as its predecessor, and a design that is 8 percent thinner on average. Coin also touts that the software update that brings EMV capabilities could include other new features, as well.

Coin heavily touts that security is the primary focus for the company, which means every Coin 1.0 wonder will be able to update to Coin 2.0 for free. Users can do so by heading into the settings menu of the companion Coin app on their mobile device and following the steps there.

Coin 2.0 units will begin shipping today. You can signup to purchase the card here. View the video below for details on how Coin 2.0 works:

[youtube https://youtu.be/fOaxS56DzC0]

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Comments

  1. Chris Giordano - 9 years ago

    Being that it took them forever and a day just to send them out I have little confidence in this actually happening in a timely fashion. I had an atrocious experience with them as an early backer and they claimed that I only canceled my Coin and not my wife’s so she received hers and was unable to send it back. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS COMPANY!

    I also don’t really see the point in making the card NFC. I mean the freaking device they showed was an iPhone 6 WHICH ALREADY SUPPORTS NFC. Why bother using a Coin when Apple Pay works just fine for me everywhere that NFC payments are supported.

  2. Stephen (@MorningZ) - 9 years ago

    This is great and all but they REALLY need to address the main issue with this thing, and the reason why my Coin 1.0 is sitting in a drawer in my desk rather than in my wallet: if it doesn’t work 100% of the time, then it’s absolutely useless because I’m forced to carry the actual cards anyways in case Coin won’t read/work/get-accepted

    • cjt3007 - 9 years ago

      Totally! Unless Coin 2 copies every bit of info on the stripe, then it’ll be only slightly more useful than 1.0 as it has NFC but NFC isn’t accepted everywhere either!

    • totencough - 9 years ago

      I’ve only found 1 place where my Coin hasn’t worked (besides an ATM slot) and I’ve tried it everywhere where Apple Pay isn’t available. Is your failure rate really that high?

      • davidhlawrence - 9 years ago

        Mine is. Works maybe 75% of the time at most and doesn’t read any of my loyalty cards. As the OP says, anything less than 100% is useless. Coin is one big fail.

  3. griffinjar - 9 years ago

    Totally useless idea.

    • totencough - 9 years ago

      Except if you have cards that you don’t need that often that you can always have with you without having them with you. When it works, it’s magical. But I can definitely see why some people wouldn’t find it useful.

  4. therackett - 9 years ago

    I’ve stopped using Coin. When it does work, it’s nice…but often it doesn’t work at all, or it takes the swiper a number of tries to get it to work…I’d say 6 or 7 out of 10 times it will work first try. I’ve had it come back at dinners which is the worst. It was interesting prefacing it’s use with what it is at first, but it simply got old.

    All of that said, I have 2 cards total that I use daily…so consolidating to one isn’t exactly a life-changing thing.

    I doubt this new one will be much better. The issue is the dynamic stripe, and the fact that it’s buried under a substrate. Even new cards take a couple swipes sometimes…so this thing is crippled from the start.

    ApplePay on the other hand works every time. I’ll hang my hat on ApplePay becoming more ubiquitous versus something like Coin ever working well enough to carry exclusively.

  5. My biggest issue with coin now is Chip and pin… i cant even use my card at Walmart anymore. Has anyone else had this issue?

  6. fwg89 - 9 years ago

    Coin 2.0 😆😆😆😆. That’s great in all but I’m still waiting on my Coin 1.0😡😡. I’ll stick with apple pay

  7. In addition to the lack of consistent acceptance of the card, my biggest issue has been not knowing which card is selected. I don’t generally memorize the last four digits of my cards. This nickname thing should help that a lot, but the app told me I shouldn’t expect to receive the updated card until Q1 2016.

  8. Greg Heidman Heidel - 8 years ago

    In my experience with Coin 2.0, it frequently does not work and once it doesn’t work, you can’t trust it and you have to carry your other cards. Worse yet is their return policy, which is that once you use it, you can’t return it. A card that doesn’t work a good amount of the time should always be able to be returned. It was a total waste of my time and money and I would not advise anyone to support them until they at least back their product better.

Author

Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com