Dynamics & Sprint showed off the Dyanmics Wallet Card at CES. This card is their take on an all in one card, the idea being that you can load multiple credit cards into a single card for convenience. These types of all in one cards aren’t new, in fact they were all the rage in 2015 when it seemed a new one was popping up every other week (e.g Stratos, Plastc, Wallby, Swyp, Final). The problem was that none of these were really EMV compatible and in the end they didn’t actually launch or were a failure upon arrive.
In the above image the two arrows going in opposite directs are used to switch between cards. The credit card number/network logo is actually a 65,000 pixel display that can display the card number and also be used to send out alerts.
Features
- Can store multiple cards in one. You can store debit, credit, pre-paid multi-currency, one-time use or loyalty cards on a single card. There is an on screen display and you can also switch between the cards/accounts.
- Can be instantly issued. Financial institutions or retailers can instantly issue these cards to consumers and can be activated immediately.
- Alerts and messages. There is a 65,000 pixel display. This can display account information (e.g remaining funds or credit limits).
- Self charging battery. Card charges itself through normal operation (e.g making a payment).
- Data breach response management. If a card is compromised or a data breach occurs the issuing bank can delete the compromised card account and replace it immediately with a new card and account number.
Final Thoughts
Dynamics has partnered with Visa, Mastercard & JCB and raised $110 million dollars (last round was $70 million lead by Mastercard) for this product. I’ll remain skeptical until I see the product being used in a real world situation, based on what I’ve seen it looks to work as advertised. That being said I think this product is several years late to the game, I don’t see this as a better solution than mobile wallets but traditional payment networks are desperate to get a piece of that pie and it looks like this is their solution (or at least one attempt at it).
If they truly got funding from a card network, this has the best chance of succeeding. The problem with RFID/NFC payments is that even after 12 years only a fraction of merchants offer this. Some of us have maxed out the 8 card limit of Apple Pay. The next best solution was LoopPay which allows payment via the magnetic stripe, but it doesn’t work in many swipe readers like at gas pumps. Also, Loop Pay got acquired by Samsung Pay and they shut out Apple users of course.
If they can have 1 dynamic card that can allow storage of multiple cards from various banks/issuers then this will be successful.
BUT If 1 dynamic card can only store multiple credit cards from 1 issuer then this program will fail. An average customer will only have 1 or 2 cards from the same bank. This will leave an average customer to still hold multiple dynamic cards. Ex: 1 card from chase, 1 card from amex, 1 card from discover, and 1 card from bank of america.
This will be great if it can handle a portfolio of cards from different banks AND be usable with both chip readers and mobile payment receivers. I’m excited!
>You can store debit, credit, pre-paid multi-currency, one-time use or loyalty cards on a single card. There is an on screen display and you can also switch between the cards/accounts.
If I can store prepaid metabank cards on this then I will jump on it like a mad man. My gift card liquidation strategy requires me to go out of the way to a Fred Meyer location that doesn’t mind/check that I’m using prepaid cards to buy MOs. This would be a great way around that issue (as long as I can still run the card as debit, otherwise, there’s no point to it aside from it being a cool gadget with buttons on it).
That was my first thought as well. I hope someone can test this out and let us know! I currently have very few (and very inconvenient) options for liquidating those lovely VISA giftcards.
According to TPG, this is going to be issued by banks and can only carry one issuer’s cards (as opposed to other faild attempts in the past). If they can secure contracts with major banks, this might actually be successful.
Not sure that’s 100% the case, they have solutions with Visa Mastercard and some other payment networks. I really don’t see the point of it if it’s locked to a single bank, makes it even worse.
Why not? I currently have 5 personal Chase cards, and only carry CSR in my wallet. With this, I could carry the multipurpose card instead, and it’d be great if it had support for business cards as well, as I have to carry those separately.
The best case would be if newly-approved cards could be loaded right away, without having to wait for any more dead trees and dinosaurs to arrive.
to CM. But not everyone has 5 credit cards under 1 bank. churners and efficient point collectors are a very small percentage of the customer based. Most people will only have 1 or 2 cards from a single bank. For most people, the idea of having 10 to 15 credit card is an overkill.
I listened to the video from CES and they seem to indicate that the card would be tied to the issuer. You can switch between Debit, Credit or Rewards Points to pay, for example, but from a single issuer.
Even this is better than having to carry 4 different chase cards or 10 different visa and MasterCard cards. For the record I only carry 6 cards at any one time but this way I wouldn’t have to choose, I could carry all my cards in just 2-3 of these. (assuming it’s not price prohibitive)
This sounds totally useless, but I’m sure I’m not the demographic they are marketing to.
Card probably comes with a pre-issued Sharper Image credit card already saved on it.
Also Dynamics is a shit show with horrid leadership. Don’t support them. Source: I know a number of people who have worked there.
Why would I carry an extra electronic with similar function to digital wallets when my phone can do the same job?
I’d rather use this vs mobile wallets.
Out of interest, why? Genuinely curious, I’d like to understand their target market and competitive advantage a bit more.
Because unless you have a Samsung phone, every mobile wallet solution still requires carrying all the cards you’d like to use regularly in case the store doesn’t accept NFC. This works around that.
I so badly wish that LoopPay had not sold to Samsung and instead had licensed to everyone, instead we’re stuck with NFC that only exists in some places and still needing a packed wallet “just in case” everywhere else.
That’s a good point
LoopPay may have been acquired by Samsung (mainly for the MST technology/patent), but it isn’t the only company that holds a patent for magnetic stripe emulation.
Dynamics (the same Dynamics referenced in this post) owns the patent for WMC, which in practice performs very similarly to LoopPay’s MST, and is based on the same concept. Here is a great article that points out their similarities and differences:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lg-pay-vs-samsung-zanghee-cho
Dynamics has already licensed WMC to LG for use with their LG Pay mobile wallet, which went live in South Korea last year in their flagship LG G6 phone, and is coming to the US in June of this year. Since Dynamics is otherwise unaffiliated with LG (and indeed, they’ve partnered with plenty of large corporations before, e.g. Citibank, and Sprint as in this post), there is hope that other phone manufacturers may be able to jump on the WMC bandwagon in the future.
My current phone doesn’t support mobile wallets, you’d have to have a flagship phone.
Beyond that, when my last phone used to support Android pay, the read failure rate was at least 60%.
I have iphone and end up using physical card most place because apple pay is not accepted. So one card just for costco, one just for target. Rotating card swap in and out of wallet every quarter.
I think Timing could have been better but wallet have not really covered entire market. This would work wonders if theses come out quickly if they take 2 more years this exercise would be almost waste of time.
I think the assumption was that magnetic stripe emulation would eventually come to all major phone manufacturers (including Apple), not just Samsung and LG.
We’ll see just how long that might take, though…
Nothing better than shoving VC money into a drain.
Except, you know, giving that money to charity, or the government, or Will, or me.