Speaker 1: Get in techt with Technology with text Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about some more money matters. We had our
Speaker 1: discussion about all of our currency, which was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, but it's not the only thing about money
Speaker 1: in tech that really is an interesting subject that's come
Speaker 1: up in discussion a lot, particularly in the United States recently. Oh,
Speaker 1: certainly not. In fact, many ways that we exchange money
Speaker 1: these days are really really technological. Yeah. In fact, uh,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the way money changes hands has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with any sort of physical currency whatsoever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never actually carry cash on me. But we've never
Speaker 1: really talked on this show about how credit cards work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And uh, and so we actually put forth
Speaker 1: that we're going to do an episode about smart cards
Speaker 1: and smart technology and NFC and credit cards and asked
Speaker 1: if anyone had any other questions. We did have response Chase,
Speaker 1: our buddy, Chase said, be sure to talk about coin.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, Chase, we got you covered. And you you
Speaker 1: may be thinking, but what about traditional magnetic stripe cards?
Speaker 1: And we are totally not talking about those today. Now, well, well,
Speaker 1: well here, here's all you need to know. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: information that's related to the credit card account you have
Speaker 1: that's located on that magnetic stripe. You can have a
Speaker 1: reader that reads that information when the stripe is pushed
Speaker 1: past it that that actually has that little magnetic field
Speaker 1: that can generate the information necessary for the processing of
Speaker 1: the payment. But really we wanted to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the more advanced technologies will probably at some point
Speaker 1: go back and actually talk about the development of that
Speaker 1: magnetic stripe tech because we were so dependent upon it
Speaker 1: for so long. In fact, in the United States we're
Speaker 1: still very heavily dependent upon it. And actually that's why
Speaker 1: we wanted to do this episode about NFC technology because
Speaker 1: in j Nuary of some forty million US Target customers
Speaker 1: Target the brand the store, the store um had their
Speaker 1: credit card information stolen during a hack. And in February
Speaker 1: the news broke that Congress and the major credit card
Speaker 1: companies here in the States are are finally in agreement
Speaker 1: that America should move to these smart credit cards, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure has the rest of the world just snickering
Speaker 1: at us, because this is technology that exists in other
Speaker 1: places and has existed in other places for decades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, so much so that it's become part of
Speaker 1: of just like the general UH language. I remember watching
Speaker 1: this little tangent here, but I remember watching an episode
Speaker 1: of that Mitchell and web Look, which is a comedy
Speaker 1: sketch series from the over in the UK, and at
Speaker 1: one point there is a comedy duo vaudeville team called
Speaker 1: uh Fish and Chip and they're breaking up. That that's
Speaker 1: their last names are Fish and Chip. That's adorable. But
Speaker 1: Chip breaks up to go and join up with a
Speaker 1: guy whose last name is Pen, so it's Chip and Pen.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that that was a thing when
Speaker 1: I saw this pen are. Yeah, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: Chip and pen was. That was just that's the shorthand
Speaker 1: for this technology of a chip that's inside a credit
Speaker 1: card and a pen a personal identification number that you
Speaker 1: used to fully fulfill a transaction. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I just was like, oh, so you're going from an
Speaker 1: established pairing of things to something unusual, And then as
Speaker 1: the joke continue, like no, this must be a thing.
Speaker 1: And again it just shows how in the United States
Speaker 1: we're way behind on this technology. Yeah, so master Card
Speaker 1: and Visa have both set themselves a deadline of October
Speaker 1: to roll this technology out to their customers in the US.
Speaker 1: But but, but let's let's go back a little bit.
Speaker 1: What exactly are smart cards? Where does this NFC? What
Speaker 1: what is NFC? Where does all this technology come from?
Speaker 1: An excellent question. NFC stands for near field communication, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about on this podcast before. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's good to have a refresher. And near field communication
Speaker 1: is just a type of short range radio transmission. It's
Speaker 1: it's not in itself some sort of brand new technology
Speaker 1: that we had never thought of. It's just a very
Speaker 1: specific implementation of radio waves. Right, It's not like not
Speaker 1: like some brand new weird energy that glows orange in
Speaker 1: the dark or something. Right, And what's actually special about
Speaker 1: it is that it's extremely short range, like like ten
Speaker 1: centimeters or less. Yeah. Yeah, ten centimeters tends to be
Speaker 1: what people say is the maximum transmission distance for most implementations.
Speaker 1: I think technically it can go up to around twenty
Speaker 1: centimeters depending upon how you build it into your technology.
Speaker 1: But for the for the applications we're thinking about, ten
Speaker 1: centimeters makes the most sense, because you're actually talking about
Speaker 1: exchanging information between two very small devices that can be
Speaker 1: brought into proximity with one another. So it's not the
Speaker 1: sort of thing you want to be able to broadcast
Speaker 1: across a country, let alone a room, certainly, which you
Speaker 1: is why usually we don't talk about very short distances
Speaker 1: being special in technology, but but this is, this is
Speaker 1: one of those rare occasions. And uh, it's it's also
Speaker 1: good for transmitting small amounts of information. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: designed to move lots of data very quickly. In fact,
Speaker 1: the maximum speed, depending again upon the implementation, is around
Speaker 1: a hundred six kilabits per second up to four four
Speaker 1: killa bits per second. The killa bits per second, that's
Speaker 1: that's not a lot right in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: If you had taught me back in the Apple two
Speaker 1: E days, I would have thought, wow, that was fat.
Speaker 1: You can move everything I've ever written in just a
Speaker 1: couple of seconds. But these days, that's that's super slow.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking now about people getting fiber where
Speaker 1: they get a gigabit per second download. That's I don't
Speaker 1: even understand what that means right now. Right now, that
Speaker 1: just seems like a dream, although Google Fiber possibly coming
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, uh and totally different podcasts. But anyway, Yes,
Speaker 1: so NFC really suited for this the small amount of data,
Speaker 1: small number of packets going between chips and uh there
Speaker 1: are lots of different implementations of that as well. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so we mentioned that this is all sent via
Speaker 1: a radio frequency. What frequency is that? Thirteen point fifty
Speaker 1: six mega hurts Okay. Um. It was chosen specifically for
Speaker 1: its suitability for for inductive coupling, which we'll get into
Speaker 1: in a second here. But it's basically the technology that
Speaker 1: makes all of this work. Um. And it's also pretty
Speaker 1: resistant to environmental interference and human tissue does not readily
Speaker 1: absorb it. Yeah, these are all very important things if
Speaker 1: you're talking about a technology that's going to be around people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we're talking about stuff that could be either that
Speaker 1: credit card that we're going to talk about eventually, or
Speaker 1: even a smartphone where you have a virtual credit card
Speaker 1: stored on another device. Plus, this idea of the resistance
Speaker 1: to environmental interference really important. If you're talking again about
Speaker 1: something that's going to be used frequently. You don't want,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's some sort of weird stormy weather
Speaker 1: outside and suddenly you can't process payments. If you're an
Speaker 1: umbrella store, that's bad news. That's very bad news. That's
Speaker 1: a terrible business model. Yes, you should have gone with
Speaker 1: some other payment plan. Okay. So so technically this is
Speaker 1: an extension of r f I D technology, which is
Speaker 1: why you might have sometimes heard uh, n f C
Speaker 1: and r f I D being kind of equated colloquially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's similar in r f I D stands for
Speaker 1: radio frequency identification, So it's it's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you've ever had one of those um those security badges
Speaker 1: that you then hold up to a reader that when
Speaker 1: it detects the security badge, it will unlock the door
Speaker 1: for you so you can continue in. Most of those
Speaker 1: badges are using r f I D rather than NFC technology,
Speaker 1: although technically they could use either. I mean, some of
Speaker 1: them probably do use n f C. It depends on
Speaker 1: it depends on how much money and what exactly you
Speaker 1: want to do with this kind of thing. But but
Speaker 1: both of these technologies when you really get down to it.
Speaker 1: Our applications of that inductive coupling stuff that we were
Speaker 1: talking about just a minute ago um. And that's the
Speaker 1: property of flowing electrons and magnetic fields to influence each
Speaker 1: other um, meaning that when electrons flow through a conductive material,
Speaker 1: they create a magnetic field. And conversely, and existing magnetic
Speaker 1: field can create a flow of electrons in a conductive
Speaker 1: material exactly as long as you've got a fluctuating magnetic field,
Speaker 1: because otherwise, if you or or in this case, you're
Speaker 1: talking about bringing something within the proximity of a magnetic
Speaker 1: field that will cause electrons to flow. The important thing
Speaker 1: is if you want to make that last like you
Speaker 1: want to, and it's something that's going to be a
Speaker 1: magnetic field that continues to induce electricity, it has to
Speaker 1: be a fluctuating magnetic field, otherwise it'll just it will
Speaker 1: induce electricity originally at first, and then everything kind of
Speaker 1: balances out. So the same sort of thing with alternating current.
Speaker 1: Actually alternating current is necessary to create that magnetic field
Speaker 1: because or at least a fluctuating one, because otherwise balances
Speaker 1: And yeah, you just get something that's equivalent to a
Speaker 1: bar magnet, which would be useful for a moment and
Speaker 1: then not useful anymore. Right, we know all of this
Speaker 1: thanks to Michael Faraday's work way back in the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: So this is not new technology technically, no, But I
Speaker 1: should point out that Michael Faraday made all of his
Speaker 1: purchases in cash, so just made that up alright, So yeah,
Speaker 1: r F I D. Originally we're talking about a passive system, right,
Speaker 1: It's not something that's actively communicating between two entities. So
Speaker 1: in other words, you really had something that was kind
Speaker 1: of like a detector, and then if the right sort
Speaker 1: of chip came into the the field of the detector,
Speaker 1: everything's cool. But you're not getting like an exchange of information, right,
Speaker 1: And what's going on there is that if you've got
Speaker 1: a chip in something um and by by passing that's
Speaker 1: something near a reader that generates a magnetic field, you're
Speaker 1: inducing the flow of electricity in the chip, thus creating
Speaker 1: a pneumatic magnetic field which the reader can then pick up. Right.
Speaker 1: So this is pretty simple stuff. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like the chip inside whatever it is, whether it's a
Speaker 1: key fob or a card or whatever, it's not itself,
Speaker 1: uh connected to any sort of battery. It only gets
Speaker 1: that electricity when it comes into contact with that magnetic
Speaker 1: field of the reader. So, uh that you know that's passive.
Speaker 1: It means that there's not an active amount of electricity
Speaker 1: going through that chip. However, there are also active versions
Speaker 1: of r F I D. Yeah, if you power that chip,
Speaker 1: it will allow you to to a to extend the
Speaker 1: chip to reader distance and also to store some information
Speaker 1: on the chip for the reader to find. Right, So
Speaker 1: in this case we're talking about something more advanced than
Speaker 1: just a key in a lock. Now we've got something
Speaker 1: where you could theoretically have information stored on that r
Speaker 1: F I D chip. That is very important to allow
Speaker 1: you to do some form of transaction, whether it's monetary
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Right. NFC uses this same technology, but it
Speaker 1: allows for for data transfer both ways, and basically does
Speaker 1: this by letting the chip and the reader both have
Speaker 1: the capacity to act as the active or the passive
Speaker 1: partner in the transaction and they kind of switch roles
Speaker 1: or flip flop back and forth in order to complete
Speaker 1: any given transaction. And this is what really makes that
Speaker 1: NFC ability. Like using it in the in the sense
Speaker 1: of a payment makes it really useful because not only
Speaker 1: can it allow you to pay for something, you can
Speaker 1: have this ongoing relationship between an app on either a
Speaker 1: credit card or in your phone or whatever whatever implementation,
Speaker 1: there can be this ongoing communication that allows you to
Speaker 1: do other things besides just make a payment, like apply
Speaker 1: bonuses that you may have accrued by being a frequent
Speaker 1: shopper at a particular place you know, or really carefully
Speaker 1: encrypt a payment. Yes, and that will be really important
Speaker 1: for us to talk about when we get into the
Speaker 1: at least the perceived drawbacks of NFC. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about lots you know this. This is just kind of
Speaker 1: a platform, right, This is just a way of transmitting information. Again,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessary early mean that it's just paying. It
Speaker 1: can be practically anything. And in fact, one of the
Speaker 1: examples that I would hear all the time when I
Speaker 1: was first hearing about NFC being incorporated into cell phones,
Speaker 1: so that you would have an NFC chip in a
Speaker 1: cell phone that you could bring to cell phones together
Speaker 1: and exchange an electronic business card. So that way, if
Speaker 1: I'm at a conference and everyone happens to have these phones,
Speaker 1: we can meet with one another and do this quick exchange,
Speaker 1: so I now have their contact information. I don't have
Speaker 1: to keep up with lots of physical paper cards that ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, you're going to the washers or they're going
Speaker 1: to go into a dusk drawer or into the garbage.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you know, that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: So that was one example, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other ones too, Like, for example, maybe maybe Lauren
Speaker 1: and I both have UH music players electronic music players
Speaker 1: that have these this NFC technology in it, I might
Speaker 1: be able to do. You know, Lauren's listening to some
Speaker 1: music that I think sounds interesting, but I'm not familiar
Speaker 1: with it, and then just by tapping the phones, she
Speaker 1: can give me the information where I have access to
Speaker 1: that same sort of music. This would never actually happen
Speaker 1: because also the fact that Lauren and I listened to
Speaker 1: totally different types of music, and so I would never
Speaker 1: ever think anything she listened to was interesting and vice versa. Clearly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, come on, I like Tibetan throat
Speaker 1: screen singing. It's just it's that's my thing. I've never
Speaker 1: listened to Tibetan thrash metal, but that's that's interesting, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: all right, And so if you're thinking that all of
Speaker 1: this UH near field communications r F I D stuff
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like that Bluetooth low energy beacon stuff
Speaker 1: that we were talking about in a recent episode. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of similar, but it's different in a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. First of all, NFC and r F I
Speaker 1: d uh with with those things, the device that contains
Speaker 1: the chip has to be a lot closer to the
Speaker 1: reader than with Bluetooth low energy. Right, Bluetooth you've got
Speaker 1: like a maximum range of fifty meters, which, if you
Speaker 1: do the math, is significantly greater than ten centimeters. It's
Speaker 1: significantly You're indeed correct. And secondly, each chip and reader
Speaker 1: can only interact with one thing at a time. That is,
Speaker 1: once a transaction is started with a chip, the reader
Speaker 1: will communicate only with that chip, and the chip only
Speaker 1: with that reader until the transaction is complete. So NFC
Speaker 1: isn't good for broadcasting to multiple multiple devices the way
Speaker 1: that Bluetooth blow energy is. But this actually, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: makes it more ideal for the kind of things like
Speaker 1: payment process. It's more secure. Yeah, you know that you're
Speaker 1: not accidentally paying for someone else's purchase, or you know
Speaker 1: there's that things aren't getting yeah, if everything is set
Speaker 1: up correctly, right, right, like First of all, the range
Speaker 1: is so short that it's not likely that some let's
Speaker 1: say it's a store that has multiple cash registers, unless
Speaker 1: those cash registers are really close together and and those
Speaker 1: reading devices are you know, practically next to each other,
Speaker 1: which can create problems of multiplying the field and getting
Speaker 1: everything kind of confused. Yeah, that that would be a problem,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's fairly easy to solve. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it's not likely that you're gonna have two devices within uh,
Speaker 1: you know, having that ten centimeter overlap radius overlap. But
Speaker 1: for another, because it has this one on one communication
Speaker 1: and blocks everything else out, you don't have to necessarily
Speaker 1: worry about their being interference from other ways either, like
Speaker 1: someone taking out their their smartphone that has the same
Speaker 1: sort of technology to make their purchase in their next
Speaker 1: to you, but because of the arc of their hand
Speaker 1: it comes into contact with that field. It really reduces
Speaker 1: those those, um, those worst case scenarios quite a bit.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about actual NFC credit cards. Now, again,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things where in some countries
Speaker 1: this is ah, this has been looked into for a while,
Speaker 1: But let's let's talk about specifically the United States because one,
Speaker 1: we lived there, and too, there's this new initiative for
Speaker 1: the US to kind of move to this smart credit
Speaker 1: card technology and to explain to our our U S
Speaker 1: listeners what the big deal, while again all of our
Speaker 1: friends over in Europe and Asia chuckle to themselves. Sure,
Speaker 1: because France was really the first country to adopt the
Speaker 1: technology for for payment related purposes. That was like what
Speaker 1: like to three years ago in Night four? Whoa, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, the year after Return of the Jedi
Speaker 1: came out, and they furthermore, are you sure that wasn't
Speaker 1: two eighty three? They all came out three years apart. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to question you. Um. Furthermore, France had
Speaker 1: widespread chip based credit and debit systems by nineteen two,
Speaker 1: So so we're we're technically really only fourteen or known.
Speaker 1: That's twenty four years behind, not thirty something years. But
Speaker 1: well that's that's something right. So again, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not that the United States hasn't tried this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff out, or that we don't have companies that are
Speaker 1: working on building this technology into their credit cards. It's
Speaker 1: just that we don't necessarily see it spread out widely
Speaker 1: across our entire infrastructure. Right. Uh sure. Side note, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I actually said numbers correctly. I really
Speaker 1: can't subtract on the fly, so if if you need
Speaker 1: to write it and correct me on that one. But
Speaker 1: but okay, So anyway, the US has indeed seen applications
Speaker 1: of this technology before. It's not completely new, like Jonathan
Speaker 1: was just saying, circa seven mobile, the the Gasoline Petroleum Company,
Speaker 1: debuted a station credit card system that used an r
Speaker 1: F I D key chain to access the user's account,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand five, JP Morgan Chase introduced
Speaker 1: a card a credit card UH with a proprietary r
Speaker 1: F I D system called blink right, and then Visa
Speaker 1: and master Card have both been looking into it as well.
Speaker 1: Moving into the two thousand's, we've seen that technology come up,
Speaker 1: but again, not so useful if if you were kind
Speaker 1: of a homebody. Right. Well, the problem is that this
Speaker 1: technology is terrific, but it only works if stores are
Speaker 1: set up with the infrastructure to allow you to use it.
Speaker 1: So although they were pretty great for Americans who traveled
Speaker 1: to other countries, there weren't that many places that you
Speaker 1: could use them in the US, and in fact, I
Speaker 1: know that there are tourists who come to the United
Speaker 1: States who are used to this system and back in
Speaker 1: Europe or back in Asia who then I wonder why
Speaker 1: you have to take their credit card in order to
Speaker 1: make a payment at say a restaurant or you know,
Speaker 1: they the whole swiping thing is one of those things
Speaker 1: that oh, how how how quaint and insecure. But we'll
Speaker 1: get into that too, but yeah, it was. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things where I know there are people who
Speaker 1: come over to the United States are kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: the US has this this at least this reputation of
Speaker 1: being really technologically advanced and forward thinking and all of
Speaker 1: those kind of things, but when you get to certain industries,
Speaker 1: we really lag behind. In fact, we lag behind in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. But but you know, within within
Speaker 1: the United States, we don't we don't tend to think
Speaker 1: that way because we're kind of insulated and we aren't
Speaker 1: living in this own little tech tech bubble where we
Speaker 1: think we've got all the best stuff. Guys, we don't
Speaker 1: have the best stuff. We do not we had the
Speaker 1: best stuff in a long time. Merchants and credit card
Speaker 1: companies both have cited the cost of the infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: also the public's lack of understanding of the technology as
Speaker 1: barriers to making all of this widespread. Yeah, ignorance and
Speaker 1: expense the two big barriers, and in fact that ignorance problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like it's something simple that you
Speaker 1: just do a couple of little p s A s
Speaker 1: and people understand how the technology works, but never underestimate
Speaker 1: how we will allow ignorance to play into our major
Speaker 1: policy decisions. If you want an example of that, just
Speaker 1: take a look at how well the metric system was
Speaker 1: implemented in the United States. It's it's understandable, and maybe
Speaker 1: not about the metric systems, but it's it's understandable about
Speaker 1: about business decisions that are going to potentially cost you
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Like I can see why why
Speaker 1: companies would be a little bit shy about enacting some
Speaker 1: thing that they don't think is going to make them money.
Speaker 1: And in fact, now we'll get into why one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons why why merchants in particular might be reluctant,
Speaker 1: and part of that is that although NFC itself is
Speaker 1: a standard right, that's a standard form of radio transmission.
Speaker 1: So the basic technology upon which information is flowing is
Speaker 1: going to remain the same from one implementing one implementation
Speaker 1: to another. The actual uh software that's being used to
Speaker 1: transmit that data depends upon who it is that's creating
Speaker 1: the program or the proprietary right and there they have
Speaker 1: not classically made these systems to to work across each other. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you have one credit card company that's using
Speaker 1: one of these implementations of software and a different credit
Speaker 1: card company that uses a completely different implementation, and those
Speaker 1: two programs cannot communicate with each other, then as a vendor,
Speaker 1: you may have to choose either between two different credit
Speaker 1: card companies or you have to spend twice as much
Speaker 1: to get as many to be able to support both
Speaker 1: of them. So, because there's no standard, okay, but so
Speaker 1: there are a few different proprietary ways of using this
Speaker 1: in the States right now. Exactly. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: big ones are at least one of the ones that
Speaker 1: probably has the most high profile of all of them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not the oldest implementation, but it's one
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have heard about is Google.
Speaker 1: Google has really been behind NFC technology for a while now,
Speaker 1: a couple of years and they also have their app
Speaker 1: called Google Wallet, which is meant for both payment well
Speaker 1: not just both. It's meant for payment transfers, so that
Speaker 1: if you're buying something from a merchant that supports Google Wallet.
Speaker 1: It's also meant to be able to give you access
Speaker 1: to special deals, like if someone's got a sale. It
Speaker 1: can give you a notification. If it's some vendor that
Speaker 1: you've gone to several times, it might let you know
Speaker 1: about any specials that are running. Uh. It can also
Speaker 1: incorporate things like customer loyalty programs. So let's say that
Speaker 1: I use it for my local coffee shop and the
Speaker 1: tenth cup of coffee I get a freak cup. I
Speaker 1: don't have to keep track of a card that has
Speaker 1: to be punched. It's all. It's all. Yeah, it's tracked
Speaker 1: on the app itself. UM So that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big one that's got a lot of press recently. And
Speaker 1: you know, I have a smartphone that has an NFC chip,
Speaker 1: I have a Google Wallet account. I have never used
Speaker 1: that to make I've never seen a vendor nearby that
Speaker 1: used it. I know there are some because if I
Speaker 1: go on their website and I do a search, a
Speaker 1: few of them are in this area, this area being
Speaker 1: Buckhead in Atlanta, that's where our office is, and I
Speaker 1: know there are a few that accept it. I have
Speaker 1: never gone to any of them to try it out,
Speaker 1: So I mean it's not that I'm afraid of technology.
Speaker 1: I just don't have access to it. Yeah, I haven't either.
Speaker 1: So then we've got MasterCard. They have a a app
Speaker 1: called UH, or at least a technology called pay Pass,
Speaker 1: which is a tap to pay method where you use
Speaker 1: a physical card that has a passive n FC chip
Speaker 1: in it. So it's kind of similar to those passive
Speaker 1: r F I D chips we talked about earlier. It
Speaker 1: doesn't require a power supply, right, which is important. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got a physical credit card, you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of space to put a battery there, so UH
Speaker 1: you end up using the inductive coupling to get this
Speaker 1: payment terminal to process the information UM and you can
Speaker 1: also have an electronic version of it that's stored as
Speaker 1: an app on a smartphone that has enough C chip
Speaker 1: and that one is compatible with Google Wallet, which, as
Speaker 1: we said before, is maybe not actually useful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it all depends on you, Like if you
Speaker 1: live in San Francisco. There's probably every single place around
Speaker 1: you that's that supports it, but here in Atlanta, you know. So. Um.
Speaker 1: Another one is one that's done by American Express, a
Speaker 1: T and T, T Mobile and Verizon. Uh. This one,
Speaker 1: for all you archer fans is uh isis UH. That's
Speaker 1: actually the name of it, isis I s I S.
Speaker 1: It promotes itself as the industry's most widely accepted mobile wallet,
Speaker 1: So it's very similar to Google Wallet, has those same
Speaker 1: kind of features, but it's a different proprietary approach. So
Speaker 1: again ISIS and Google Wallet. If it's like a Google
Speaker 1: Wallet using that MasterCard pay pass, they don't necessarily work
Speaker 1: on the same system. So if you have a receiver
Speaker 1: as a vendor, you may only be able to accept
Speaker 1: one but not the other, which we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about in our our problems with n f
Speaker 1: C section. And then of these companies that we've talked about,
Speaker 1: it seems like Samsung and Visa have been left out
Speaker 1: in the cold. Yeah, you got Samsung Wallet, which is
Speaker 1: a partnership between Samsung and Visa, But this one was
Speaker 1: kind of a a head scratcher because they announced this
Speaker 1: partnership in two thousand thirteen at the Mobile the World
Speaker 1: Mobile Congress, which the two fourteen one is happening as
Speaker 1: we're recording this podcast. But the two thirteen one they
Speaker 1: announced this partnership. They said, Oh, here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be this big thing. It's going to be
Speaker 1: our approach to this NFC payment processing and all the
Speaker 1: sort of wallet features you would expect. And then they
Speaker 1: started announcing the upcoming Samsung phones which did not support
Speaker 1: Samsung Wallet. So you had this partnership in this technology,
Speaker 1: but you didn't have the actual implementation available for anyone
Speaker 1: to purchase in the in the flagship products that were
Speaker 1: coming out. I'm sure it was a it was a
Speaker 1: just missed dovetail kind of situation wherein they couldn't quite
Speaker 1: make it go. Yeah. I mean, it might have even
Speaker 1: been one of those things where you try and factor
Speaker 1: in the price of including another chip in your phone
Speaker 1: because that's going to make it more. Sung is always
Speaker 1: very priced Savage, Oh yeah, yeah, Well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: they're the company that makes a product for every price
Speaker 1: point and every use case. I mean, I watched a
Speaker 1: video recently that showed a lineup of all the different
Speaker 1: Samsung products, and at one point they they joked that
Speaker 1: the video editor had died trying to put it together
Speaker 1: because it was just too many. That was a scene
Speaker 1: Net video by the way, Tales of Adventure or something
Speaker 1: along those lines. Great series. You should check it out.
Speaker 1: But we've got a lot more to talk about with
Speaker 1: this technology, including those pros and cons, and before we
Speaker 1: get to that, I think we should take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Alright, so we've kind of
Speaker 1: hit tod that some of the challenges of this whole
Speaker 1: NFC approach, particularly here in the United States. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: already implemented in other parts of the world, so why
Speaker 1: aren't we seeing it everywhere? One of the big reasons,
Speaker 1: Lauren you brought it up it is the fact that
Speaker 1: to build up infrastructure means investing. It's it costs money,
Speaker 1: and especially when you've still got all of these competing
Speaker 1: technologies working, it's it's it doesn't make any sense for
Speaker 1: anyone to build that infrastructure, right if there were one
Speaker 1: of these that came out as the dominant one, and
Speaker 1: therefore it kind of just gravitates to that becoming a
Speaker 1: standard that would be a lot easier on the merchant's
Speaker 1: end of things, because you would just invest in whatever
Speaker 1: technology one out. But in these early days, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to say which one is going to be the
Speaker 1: most important, and in fact, it may change from vendor
Speaker 1: to vendor. You might do some market research of your own,
Speaker 1: just look at past transactions that you have that you've
Speaker 1: managed over the time that you've been a merchant, and
Speaker 1: you might see perhaps your business, for some reason or another,
Speaker 1: you just process more payments through American Express, which means
Speaker 1: you would want to go with that isis approach, right,
Speaker 1: So it makes more sense to you just because the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the people who come into your store
Speaker 1: are using American Express cards. But if they're all using
Speaker 1: Visa cards, or they're all using MasterCard, or there's a
Speaker 1: real strong mix in there, your decisions start getting really
Speaker 1: murky and complicated, and you may end up investing in
Speaker 1: an infrastructure that ultimately fails to take off because some
Speaker 1: other technology becomes dominant. Well, then you've got a real
Speaker 1: problem on your hands, right, You've spent all this money
Speaker 1: with no payoff, absolutely, and and that's that's even assuming
Speaker 1: that people are using these NFC cards a lot of
Speaker 1: people still have meganetic stripes, and so therefore it's it's
Speaker 1: a dual problem. You know, if if you can't get
Speaker 1: customers onto these new cards, then they can't use your
Speaker 1: system and no one it's just yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of us catch twenty two's right. So you know, you
Speaker 1: you want there to be an existing base of customers
Speaker 1: out there who have this technology so that your investment
Speaker 1: makes sense. But the customers don't really want this technology
Speaker 1: unless there's ways to use it. So yeah, it's this
Speaker 1: this weird problem where you have to have the solution
Speaker 1: to have the problem in order to solve the other half,
Speaker 1: and it's ways. Yeah, And one of those barriers to
Speaker 1: getting customers to sign up for these for these NFC
Speaker 1: cards is the security question, right, because if you're talking
Speaker 1: about transmitting information by radio already you have people wondering
Speaker 1: about the possibility of eavesdroppers, someone carrying some sort of
Speaker 1: device that can read off the information on a chip.
Speaker 1: A couple of different things to keep in mind here. One,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about an active NFC chip, something that's
Speaker 1: actually drawing power from something like a smartphone, it's really
Speaker 1: only gonna be broadcasting when you tell it to broadcast,
Speaker 1: so when you're using the app to actually make a purchase, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, your smartphone itself has been hacked in some way,
Speaker 1: in which case you've got multiple problems, not just NFC absolutely, uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, since it is a radio communication, once
Speaker 1: that once that transmission is active, it can technically be
Speaker 1: picked up from up to like ten meters that's about
Speaker 1: thirty three ft away, right, Yeah, so there is that concern. However,
Speaker 1: one way to get around this concern is to use
Speaker 1: our beloved friend encryption and encryption. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: it's obviously going to be important for any company that
Speaker 1: wants to utilize NFC transmissions because if you don't show
Speaker 1: that you value the safety the financial safety of your customers,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have customers for very long. So
Speaker 1: this is actually pretty sophisticated stuff, and there's encryption along
Speaker 1: multiple steps, so it's not like it's just a simple
Speaker 1: it's not like a transposition cipher where A is B
Speaker 1: and B A C and C s D. They'll never
Speaker 1: figure that out, right, right, When when an NFC card
Speaker 1: and a card reader come into contact with each other,
Speaker 1: and there's encryption levels involved. There's there's this whole series
Speaker 1: of sign countersign kind of exchanges that are going to
Speaker 1: verify that that each bit is dealing with a verified bit. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you were to eavesdrop on that, all you
Speaker 1: would get is the pop product of this conversation, which
Speaker 1: would just be gobbledegook from your perspective. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the description key exactly, and nobody has the key in
Speaker 1: this situation. I mean, it's it's a it's a temporary,
Speaker 1: one time use kind of thing. And again, this technology
Speaker 1: is primed to only talk to one device at a
Speaker 1: single time, so that cuts that down quite significantly. Also,
Speaker 1: when you look at it, you know, even though you think, well,
Speaker 1: this sounds like there's some security issues, it's actually safer
Speaker 1: than our old magnetic stripe technology. Right, So even if
Speaker 1: you feel like this has got its own kind of drawbacks,
Speaker 1: it has fewer drawbacks than the stuff we're depending on
Speaker 1: right now. Oh. Absolutely, the data on a on a
Speaker 1: magnetic stripe can be read, written, deleted, or changed with
Speaker 1: pretty common equipment. Yea. This is a reason why, uh,
Speaker 1: when I stay at a hotel that uses a magnetic
Speaker 1: stripe key, I tend to keep the key because you
Speaker 1: never know what's actually been encoded on that key. There
Speaker 1: could be I mean some places use the key as
Speaker 1: also a form of payment, where you can buy stuff
Speaker 1: at a restaurant that's in the hotel, or or a
Speaker 1: shop in the hotel. It's a general identification tool. Share. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'll keep those keys and then shread them at home.
Speaker 1: I really do. That's smarter than I am. So and
Speaker 1: I'm not known as a privacy nut. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: an advocate, but I don't. I don't get like super
Speaker 1: paranoid unless I happen to be around someone like Darren Kitchen,
Speaker 1: because the dude is a brilliant hacker, nice guy. I
Speaker 1: just I just feel like everything I ever said on
Speaker 1: the Internet is in his hand anytime I happened to
Speaker 1: be near him. But other than that, I'm pretty easy going.
Speaker 1: But this is one of those steps I actually do take.
Speaker 1: That's that's not paranoia. That's intelligent different. It's not paranoid
Speaker 1: if they're really out to get you. Uh. And so, Also,
Speaker 1: like we said, these transactions, in every implementation I I've
Speaker 1: seen where you're using it to make a payment, it
Speaker 1: requires that you enter a pin as well. A personal identification,
Speaker 1: right instead of a signature. Right. So when I would
Speaker 1: make a payment at that coffee shop, in order for
Speaker 1: that payment to go through, I would first have to
Speaker 1: input whatever the PIN is, you know, however long that
Speaker 1: might be. It's usually a four digit number, that's what
Speaker 1: we're used to in the United States. Then that would
Speaker 1: allow the transaction to continue. So in other words, if
Speaker 1: you lost your smartphone and someone picked it up, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to worry about them automatically being able to
Speaker 1: use that smartphone to go on a spending spree, right right.
Speaker 1: I honestly, magnetic stripes kind of terrify me. They. I recently,
Speaker 1: when I was out to dinner with a friend, we
Speaker 1: we accidentally exchanged credit cards. When we got the bill back,
Speaker 1: and I used his card for two days before I
Speaker 1: noticed that it was his card with no problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the security measures in the United States are a little
Speaker 1: on the lax side, depending upon where you go. Some
Speaker 1: places are really good about it, like, for inst instance,
Speaker 1: I have on my card ask for I D written
Speaker 1: on the back rather than my signature, which is a
Speaker 1: terrific way of cutting down at least on that kind
Speaker 1: of kind of problem. So whenever anyone apologizes but asks
Speaker 1: for my idea, I tell them, do not apologize. That's
Speaker 1: what I want. I want that extra level. The problem
Speaker 1: is it just doesn't happen as frequently is should but
Speaker 1: at any rate. So now that kind of brings us
Speaker 1: Chase one of us to talk about coin. So we
Speaker 1: we covered the NFC thing. Coin is not and NFC
Speaker 1: enabled credit card. It's actually a different implementation of electronic
Speaker 1: credit cards, and it's a really nifty idea and the
Speaker 1: implementation is something that I've never seen before, and I
Speaker 1: find it kind of exciting and I like the I
Speaker 1: like the notion of it. But it also has some
Speaker 1: drawbacks that we're going to talk about. Sure, But but
Speaker 1: it is but it is really cool. I got so
Speaker 1: excited when I saw it. So it's it's the same
Speaker 1: size and shape as a standard credit card, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a crowd funded effort. This is this
Speaker 1: was a startup that got some of its funding at
Speaker 1: least by asking people to make contributions to their company.
Speaker 1: So what exactly is it? Well, it's build as a
Speaker 1: device that can replace every type of credit card, loyalty card,
Speaker 1: gift card, and membership card all in one go. So
Speaker 1: in other words, instead of having to carry ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen different types of cards, depending upon the kind of
Speaker 1: person you are, you would only have to have one.
Speaker 1: And it works like this because it's it's actually a
Speaker 1: computer in a card. Um that magnetic stripe on it
Speaker 1: is readwriteable, right, So not it's not. You know, a
Speaker 1: typical magnetic stripe on a credit card is read only you.
Speaker 1: You aren't. Hypothetically, you're not supposed to overwrite it. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that's given to you in the credit card
Speaker 1: that allows you to overwrite it. There are technologies that
Speaker 1: where you could overwrite the information on your magnetic strip,
Speaker 1: but it's meant to be read, right, Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's almost certainly illegal where you are.
Speaker 1: But then you rate. This is designed so that it
Speaker 1: can on the fly change that magnetic strip to mimic
Speaker 1: whatever card you would be using. So, for one thing,
Speaker 1: whatever card you're using would need to have a magnetic
Speaker 1: stripe as part of its way of being read by
Speaker 1: whatever vendor. So if you have a loyalty card that's
Speaker 1: punched card, that's not necessarily gonna you don't want to
Speaker 1: punch a hole in your coin smart card, that would be.
Speaker 1: But if it has some sort of counterpart where there's
Speaker 1: a magnetic strip or that they just implement that into
Speaker 1: their their vendor system, then you could use it as
Speaker 1: a loyalty card or whatever. U. So yeah, this this
Speaker 1: little computer on the fly can change the programming on
Speaker 1: that magnetic stripe to be whichever card you need. So
Speaker 1: the big advantage from the merchant's side of this is
Speaker 1: that they don't have to install one of those crazy
Speaker 1: readers that NFC or r F I D would need, right,
Speaker 1: They could just use their their established credit card reading
Speaker 1: equipment to do this. Because that magnetic strikes the same
Speaker 1: thing on the coin card as it would be if
Speaker 1: you were using the actual credit card that it's mimicking.
Speaker 1: So when you you swipe it, it's just going to
Speaker 1: read as if it were your Visa or MasterCard or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: And the advantage to you is that you can you
Speaker 1: can enter all of your systems of payment and loyalty
Speaker 1: that use these magnetic stripes into into the app. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the way this would work is you pair the
Speaker 1: coin smart card with something like a smart phone that
Speaker 1: that's running this coin app on it and you also
Speaker 1: get a little a little um uh peripheral that plugs
Speaker 1: into your phone. It's kind of like one of those
Speaker 1: square card readers that you've seen that that merchants often
Speaker 1: will use, where it's hooked up to an iPhone. You
Speaker 1: just swipe a card through the square things. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it turns anyone, it's like anyone into a mobile payment
Speaker 1: processing system and you can have I mean for people
Speaker 1: who run things like they go to a convinced and
Speaker 1: they have a booth set up at a convention for
Speaker 1: them to sell merchandise to people. This is great because
Speaker 1: it has such a low barrier of entry. The cost
Speaker 1: is really low. Yeah, it's it's essentially free, and then
Speaker 1: you pay a certain percentage of each of each swipe
Speaker 1: of transaction. So so it's great anyway. But this technology
Speaker 1: works very much the same way. It's got a little
Speaker 1: swipe reader that you connect to your phone, and as
Speaker 1: you swipe a card, it stores all that information that's
Speaker 1: in that magnetic stripe onto the app and then relays
Speaker 1: that to the coin smart card, so that the coin
Speaker 1: smart card is able to mimic that particular credit card
Speaker 1: or loyalty card or whatever it is. Uh. You're also
Speaker 1: supposed to take a picture of that card, so that
Speaker 1: way you will be able to cycle through the cards
Speaker 1: properly when you're using it and remember which is which. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you know, if you have been to have
Speaker 1: a check card and a credit card, and it's really
Speaker 1: important for you to use the right one. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: known some people who remember as entire credit card numbers
Speaker 1: of their own. But I know, yeah, I know folks
Speaker 1: who make enough purchases online where they've committed all of
Speaker 1: the cards they have to memory. I don't do that frequently.
Speaker 1: I have a hard time with like my phone number
Speaker 1: and my social Security number. I had a hard time
Speaker 1: with the three digit security code that's on the back
Speaker 1: of your card, which every single card I've owned, that
Speaker 1: number has worn off within like three weeks of getting
Speaker 1: the card. So I have to commit this three digit
Speaker 1: number to memory, which shouldn't be a problem, but I
Speaker 1: got a lot of brain cells that are dedicated to
Speaker 1: firefly trivia, so apparently a three digit number is a
Speaker 1: herculean task for me to remember at any rate. So
Speaker 1: you swipe all your cards, you differentiate them. Your coin
Speaker 1: smart card can then represent any of those cards, so
Speaker 1: you can then put those those physical cards simply safe. Um,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that there are some some instances where
Speaker 1: you might run into some trouble. I'll get into that
Speaker 1: when we get into some of the cons sure, but
Speaker 1: so okay, So so coin interacts with your cell phone
Speaker 1: through Bluetooth low energy. It's so good that we already
Speaker 1: did that podcast, so we don't have to go into
Speaker 1: what this is. But it does mean that the smart
Speaker 1: card and your app can communicate up to a fifty
Speaker 1: meters away from each other or or thereabouts. That's like
Speaker 1: the ideal maximum range. Uh So this actually allows you
Speaker 1: to have some cool features built into that smart card
Speaker 1: a right. One of its security features is that if
Speaker 1: your your coin card gets out of range, out of
Speaker 1: that fifty ish meter Bluetooth loow energy range of your phone,
Speaker 1: your phone will send you a little alert saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: you might have left your card somewhere. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: have done a few times at restaurants. So this would
Speaker 1: actually be that little bit of security where if someone
Speaker 1: took your wallet but you still had your phone, then
Speaker 1: you would get an alert. So you knew that you
Speaker 1: would know, maybe faster than normal, that you've been pickpocketed
Speaker 1: or if you're just happen to be careless occasionally, you know,
Speaker 1: once in a blue moon, then it would all to you.
Speaker 1: If you had left your card behind, you can immediately
Speaker 1: go back and reclaim your card, which was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's designed to be really energy efficient. That bluetooth low
Speaker 1: energy stuff is pretty cool. So the battery in the
Speaker 1: card should last a good couple of years, and then
Speaker 1: after it's out, you just replace it the way that
Speaker 1: you would replace any other magnetic stripe card exactly. And
Speaker 1: that's another thing is that you know that magnetic stripe stuff,
Speaker 1: that that material can wear down after lots, especially if
Speaker 1: you happen to be a frequent shopper. Um So in
Speaker 1: that sense, you would need to replace the card anyway
Speaker 1: because it would actually physically wear down. But the battery itself,
Speaker 1: you don't recharge it, right, there's no you don't plug
Speaker 1: your smart card in at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: It will actually hold that charge for two years. Okay,
Speaker 1: But so this is all really cool, but it sounds
Speaker 1: to me like it's not going to solve this problem
Speaker 1: of magnetic stripe card information being pretty insecure compared with NFC. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: if you happen to have a device that can read
Speaker 1: a magnetic stripe. Well, worst case scenario, let's say that
Speaker 1: some on some um person working at a a any
Speaker 1: kind of merchant, who has decided they're going to set
Speaker 1: out on a life of crime, and they have invested
Speaker 1: in a magnetic card reader where they can swipe and
Speaker 1: store information. Let's say that they've got ahold of that,
Speaker 1: and they get ahold of your card. Maybe you've handed
Speaker 1: it over for a purchase and you think you're just
Speaker 1: making a regular purchase. Meanwhile they are cycling through every
Speaker 1: single card you have and reading it. Not only would
Speaker 1: they have access to whatever card you were using at
Speaker 1: the time, they might theoretically be able to access everything.
Speaker 1: Now they're they're ways of getting around this with the app,
Speaker 1: so that if you cycle from one card to the next,
Speaker 1: you have to agree to it. So in that case,
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario is they just get access to
Speaker 1: whatever card you're using at the time for that transaction,
Speaker 1: as opposed to every card you own. So better, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's better. It's better. It's way better than suddenly saying, oh,
Speaker 1: my Visa card was lifted and my Master card, my
Speaker 1: American Express card and I no longer have nine cups
Speaker 1: of coffee at my favorite local coffee right. Apparently I
Speaker 1: made a purchase of fifty seven cups of coffee today,
Speaker 1: don't have any memory of that, possibly because of the
Speaker 1: caffeine affecting my brain, or more likely I have been hacked.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's that issue. Also, um, you know, they
Speaker 1: could store a lot more information on them than a
Speaker 1: credit card would typically have on it. So in theory,
Speaker 1: if someone were able to get access to maybe the
Speaker 1: worst case, they get access to both your phone or
Speaker 1: whatever device you happen to have paired with your card
Speaker 1: and the card itself, they get to get access to
Speaker 1: lots of personal data, so that would be an issue too. Also,
Speaker 1: I do want to put in that magnetic stripe cards
Speaker 1: and and computerized magnetic magnetic stripe cards. I'm going to
Speaker 1: figure out how to say that by the end of
Speaker 1: this podcast. I swear like coin are not the only
Speaker 1: things that you can put a whole bunch of different
Speaker 1: information on. NFC chips are capable of holding multiple kinds
Speaker 1: of all kinds of info. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to just be uh financial oriented or even
Speaker 1: how many times you've bought that cup of coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in Europe they're they're used as patient I D cards
Speaker 1: that store a certain amount of medical information on them. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean the convenience feature I totally understand, right,
Speaker 1: Especially if you are someone who has lots of different cards,
Speaker 1: the coin approach makes a lot of sense from that respect. Personally,
Speaker 1: I don't actually carry a lot of different credit cards,
Speaker 1: so for this, I would think it was a really
Speaker 1: cool technology, but it wouldn't be terribly useful for me.
Speaker 1: The cards that I do carry I want to keep
Speaker 1: very very separate and not have any chance that would
Speaker 1: excellently use one that rather than the other. Um. But
Speaker 1: I could see how this could be really important for
Speaker 1: someone who has multiple cards that they're constantly magic, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're one of those people who have that that
Speaker 1: you know, guys, you know what I'm talking about where
Speaker 1: you can't sit upright because your wallet is so thick
Speaker 1: that you're always kilted at an angle. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel you. I used to be you, but I
Speaker 1: I've managed to I did. I got rid of a
Speaker 1: lot of loyalty guards. I said, you know what, my loyalty.
Speaker 1: You can't put a price on it. I'm a free agent.
Speaker 1: I go where I want to. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: you know, things to keep in mind. You are you're
Speaker 1: you are a coffee rebel, Jonathan, I am. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: just because I went into Starbucks, you know, twelve times
Speaker 1: last week, doesn't mean I'm going to go to that
Speaker 1: one today, despite the fact that's the most convenient because
Speaker 1: it's right across the street. Anyway. Yeah, it's interesting technology.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that it's a read write magnetic strip.
Speaker 1: That to me is just cool that it's oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like it it makes me
Speaker 1: think of something that you would see in a science
Speaker 1: fiction movie, like you know, Blade Runner being one of
Speaker 1: the favorites around here in the office. But it's right
Speaker 1: here right now. So yeah, so thank you Chase for
Speaker 1: for asking us about that, because although although it is
Speaker 1: it is a technically kind of separate conversation from the
Speaker 1: NFC technology one, it's still related and I'm excited about
Speaker 1: both of these technologies upcoming. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, especially uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're seeing, like, like we said, deadlines here
Speaker 1: October two thousand fifteen for these smart cards coming up
Speaker 1: from the major credit card companies and hopefully that will
Speaker 1: also mean that we'll have an agreed upon standard at
Speaker 1: that point. And also the coin Um smart card I
Speaker 1: think they're launching sometime in the summer of two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen is when they should start seeing the actual products
Speaker 1: start getting into Backer's hands. I'm I'm wondering how this
Speaker 1: NFC decision is going to start affecting coin and whether
Speaker 1: or not Coin is running a little bit scared right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be that's one of those great ideas that
Speaker 1: launched too late. Uh you know, I'm sure we're going
Speaker 1: to see support from magnetic stripe sticking around for a
Speaker 1: little while. Anyway, I mean, merchants are going to probably
Speaker 1: have multiple things that will have to rely upon, so
Speaker 1: if you if I can't imagine anyone just throwing the
Speaker 1: system out the window, and unless they decided to do
Speaker 1: it like office space style, which is fair. That also
Speaker 1: was did bring up one other issue I thought of
Speaker 1: with the possibility of using coin as a payment. I
Speaker 1: totally it's slipped my mind, but now it's come back
Speaker 1: to me. If our is lost to the facility you're in,
Speaker 1: so some places still have those old carbon copy uh
Speaker 1: devices where you put your card down, it makes a
Speaker 1: hard carbon copy of whatever is. And this is also
Speaker 1: something you'll see if you go to like conventions or
Speaker 1: things like that where people aren't able to afford the
Speaker 1: electronic versions um or perhaps there's a a malfunction of
Speaker 1: some sort, or if you're in the basement of a
Speaker 1: large hotel, for example, and you cannot use a card
Speaker 1: swiper that's to be transmitting via three G. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't get a signal, the WiFi is completely worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've gotta You've gotta figure something else out. Well, a
Speaker 1: coin card won't help you in that sense because it's
Speaker 1: not going to have the physical numbers on the card
Speaker 1: for them to copy using this old method. So if
Speaker 1: there ever is a situation where you have to make
Speaker 1: a purchase through a merchant who doesn't have access to
Speaker 1: WiFi or three G or anything like that, or a
Speaker 1: telephone line, then I mean, granted, that's you know, one
Speaker 1: one case out of you know, a hundred that you
Speaker 1: would be encountering on a normal basis, but still something
Speaker 1: to think about. It's something where the coin method would
Speaker 1: not work. Every time it rains. My favorite tie restaurant
Speaker 1: is off limits because I don't have cash on me.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. That's well, whenever I go shopping at at
Speaker 1: any sort of convention or conference, like if I'm looking
Speaker 1: at gift shops or you know, Dragon Con here in
Speaker 1: in in Atlanta has an enormous actually sometimes more than
Speaker 1: one enormous dealer room that has all these different vendors
Speaker 1: with cool stuff in it, but a lot of them.
Speaker 1: You know, the one booth might be really technologically savvy
Speaker 1: and ready to deal with anything, and the next booth
Speaker 1: might be, you know, you need to you need to
Speaker 1: barter with chickens. It's just it's they run the whole gamut,
Speaker 1: really they do. And I'm personally sick to death of
Speaker 1: carrying chickens with me to Dragon Con. I'm not happy
Speaker 1: about either. It's just it's not convenient. So anyway, thank
Speaker 1: you so much Chase for asking about coin. It was
Speaker 1: fun to get into that. And I hope that this
Speaker 1: kind of gives some of our our u S listeners
Speaker 1: and a better idea of what enough See is all
Speaker 1: about and what they can expect to see over the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. And uh, for those of you
Speaker 1: in other places where you've been using NFC for a while,
Speaker 1: maybe you learned exactly what's going on behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of that technology you depend upon frequently. I hope that
Speaker 1: this was helpful for you guys too, And if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics that we can tackle
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