It's all thanks to a team of seven people from San Francisco startup company Coin

Nov 15, 2013 08:36 GMT  ·  By

Everyone knows what the word “coin” means, but a certain startup company may very well give it a new, double meaning, seeing as how Coin is its name and “Coin” is also what its main invention is called.

The startup is backed by Y Combinator and is led by CEO Kanishk Parashar, who went to a restaurant not long ago and paid for his food with something that looks like a normal credit card but definitely isn't.

It's not really a credit card in the pure sense of the word either. Instead, it is something that merges all credit cards into one.

Parashar has actually made a small card that merges the benefits of all the ones he owns, and he even used it to pay at a restaurant.

It has a dynamic magnetic stripe and only needs a user to load a card into a companion Android or iOS app by taking a photo of it, then swiping through Coin's headphone jack dongle.

Once you're done with that, you can toggle it on and off wherever you are and at any time, thanks to Bluetooth low energy connectivity. Up to eight cards can be synced for immediate use.

Coin is already accepting pre-orders for the new card, which it calls “Midnight” because of the black it's colored in.

Some may feel this is the sort of project you'd expect to see on Kickstarter, but Coin's CEO says they are deliberately avoiding that website because it tends to drive projects beyond the capabilities of the creators.

Which is to say, they would get too many pledges and have trouble meeting all demand. Even now, they don't expect to deliver on orders before summer of next year (2014), despite having worked on it for a year and a half already.

"We definitely want to make sure that the orders [of the Coin / Midnight] we get in we can actually satisfy," said the CEO.

For security, Coin uses 128-bit and 256-bit encryption on both its server and mobile app, as well as the card itself. The app communicates with your smartphone too, if you leave the Coin behind, telling you you've forgotten it. After extended lack of contact with your phone, Coin will deactivate itself.