FUZE Card - The one password for everything credit card equivalent

All your cards in one, why not just use the same password for everything too :smiley: Hey come to think of it, just give away your money and info to a third party right now, saves you the trouble.

This is just horrible. Possibly should be illegal. Centralising this much of your information and money into one system is just about the real world equivalent of Evil Corp banking from Mr Robot

Credit card cloners and swipers are loving the shit out of this right now.

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Or, you know, have one card.

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Some more things that make this horrible:

  1. Navigate a piece of plastic with silly buttons
  2. Ensure plastic is charged
  3. Carry charger
  4. Carry swipe tool
  5. Lock card
  6. Have an additional password
  7. Carry phone for bluetooth
  8. Ensure phone is charged
  9. Endless Hacker & New Scammer concerns

I fucking give up, this thing only needs to be IoT enabled now to make it better.

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And to top it off it even failed at a Wallmart, see how they have to swipe it.

Video from their own channel :laughing:

Not really possible for people IMO. In today's world you will have multiple cards; if only to buy specific things, or for specific purposes/use cases, or to build good credit which takes not only time but the amount of credit available which you get from the former and good spending/repaying habits . Daily spending vs, large ticket items in the thousands of dollars.

@catsay how is this any different than someone just stealing your wallet? Which holds all of your cards anyway. I haven't watched the video or seen any further articles about this; but I shall find material. Do you have any more articles on the subject to share?

Really don't want another circle-jerk thread. I'm depressed enough as it already is O_o

To be fair a lot of places are still having issues taking chip and pin. Especially here where I live. Half of the grocery stores around here still don't properly take chip and pin cards. Video is too ambiguous if it was the fault of the card or the system.

Preface

Alright, so now that I had time to watch some videos, read their privacy policy, explore their website and read some more articles I feel like I can make an educated critique on the FUZE card.

What I think is Nice

The convenience. While it may only have a 30 day battery life, as opposed to a regular card which requires no battery, it is able to hold a stack of 30 debit, credit, gift, membership, or OTP cards. That eliminates the need for large cumbersome wallets. While everyone may not have a large wallet, very many people do have multiple cards for various reasons. Saying, "Well, just don't have very many cards then", is not an acceptable response to the issue at hand; it is a cop-out response.

With every store and their dog wanting to get you to have a membership card this new layer of abstraction could help lighten the load of that very much. I myself have all my membership cards on my key-ring (if possible). Those that I don't I fit in my wallet for the most common places I go to, for the others I can't fit I just throw them away or store them in my desk at home; and then try to remember the phone number I used when I created an account.

The touch pad on the card itself which allows users to cycle through cards was pretty nifty.

What I think is Bad

Their website. On top of it being pretty bare their FAQ page gets a 503 error from their hosting company. Not to mention its hard to find more detailed information besides whats publicly available on their funding campaign.

There are two types of card, one with a chip ($$) and one without ($). It was unclear to my understanding if the one without the chip still has a mag strip or not. Mag strip by themselves, are the equivalent to your card information in clear text. In the USA, they are becoming less common but are still around on a lot of systems, kind of like Windows XP.

While on the note of security, the card implements the latest chip and NFC security, while I'm assuming only uses bluetooth to communicate with a smartphone. I am not aware of any bluetooth based payment methods. It was unclear if the information on the card itself which holds card information is encrypted or not.

It was also unclear if a smartphone is required to use the card. The software seems to just be a companion to the card but nothing explicitly stated this otherwise.

What I think they could do better

30 cards is a lot, however considering that mSD cards can hold 256 GiB and at the size of a pinkie-nail, I think they really could've sprung for more storage space.

Website needs work. See previous rant about their FAQ page.

Since only the front part of the chip needs to be inserted into the reader for a transaction to work, and how mag stips need to hurry up and die, it would make more since for a slim neck where the chip is, but a much thicker body (if only by a few millimeters) to have a more robust battery life (1 or 2 years?). Then I think the card would be much more viable as a product.

Conclusion

I think the cards security meets modern standards, but could still fall prey to the methods currently in use. That said, the card is nor more vulnerable than if your wallet was stolen.

I think the FUZE card is definitely onto something with trying to make a product that is convenient and effective for someone to use who falls into their use case (anyone with more than 5+ cards really).

I think that maybe a 3rd iteration is needed before I myself would get a card like this. One that addresses my battery life concern, smart phone dependency(?), and storage mechanisms (size and encryption(?)).


Their Indiegogo Campaign

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I don't know how it is where you live but in my part of the world (where a lot of transactions are (thankfully) in cash) I don't see a reason why you need more than one card really. I mean there might be reasons to have more than one, if you want to use a card only for certain things, but I don't see it as a must. At least that is the point of view from someone from where I live. :wink: