Coin Electronic Credit Card Releases Its Official Android App, But Pre-Order Customers Are Still Pissed

Putting your fantastic and revolutionary product up for sale before you actually finish it seems to be a surefire way to get some extremely unhappy customers – just ask anyone who’s backed a gadget on Kickstarter. Coin, the electronic credit card that can save all of your various debit, credit, and loyalty cards at once, has cause to reflect on this today. The company released its official Android app for managing the card, and the response has been somewhat less than positive.

  

In fact, “bloody furious” would be a more appropriate way to describe most of the initial reviews. You see, despite taking $50 pre-orders as far back as November of last year with a planned launch date of “summer 2014,” the company delayed its launch into next year, with a limited beta program for this fall taking its place. Initially the beta program would cost an extra $30, but after a massive backlash, Coin promised to provide it for free. Of the 15,000 beta slots reserved for the earliest pre-orders, only 24% were given to Android users, reportedly based on the metrics that the company collected. Beta-eligible Android users are being notified today, well after iOS users.

The massive outpouring of negative reviews for the Android app doesn’t seem to be caused by any particular failing of the app itself, though a few users are reporting login issues. No, the vast majority of people seem to be pissed that they aren’t eligible for the beta program… and with less than 4,000 slots available to Android users, that’s a lot of people left hanging. It doesn’t help that problems with the beta hardware that was sent out seems to include incompatibility with approximately 15% of card reader machines, forcing people to carry their “real” cards as a backup. Which kind of defeats the purpose.

On a purely technical level, the app is supposed to let you sign into the Coin service, connect to the Coin card and add any standard credit or debit card, and set an unlock tap code. The few Android users who are actually in the beta and using their Coin hardware are leaving generally positive reviews, but they’ve been massively outnumbered by dissatisfied customers. At the time of writing, Coin has a 1.5 star rating on the Play Store.