2018-04-05 02:55:57

I just noticed that the CEO of PayByChip has introduced himself in the restricted user thread so he can answer the questions posed here.

I don't see that PayByChip being only one person is a bad thing, every company, no matter how large, started somewhere with just one person with an idea. Consider Apple, for instance, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started it in Jobs's garage. Or Microsoft who was started by Bill Gates and a friend, their only product was a BASIC interpreter for the Mits Altair 8800.

For Amazon Prime members, Amazon won't allow current Prime member to use their Prime benefits, like two day shipping, on the marketplace, they will however be offering marketplace users the ability to get Prime two day shipping on marketplace orders for $50 per year. It's not available yet, but it is coming. Currently the only thing I'm using Prime for on Amazon is the two day shipping, so, for me, that would be a 50% savings over Amazon's price.

Just in case PayByChip doesn't work out, though I think they are off to a great start, I will be maintaining my Amazon account, I will however be deleting my debit card from it and canceling my Prime membership.

2018-04-05 03:01:43

That’s assuming he’s not just some random guy impersonating for attention or whatever.

2018-04-05 04:49:54

That's a pretty harsh accusation to make when you have no idea whether what you are saying has any basis in truth or not.

On the other hand, I know he's the real deal as I'm the one who invited him to join the conversation.

2018-04-05 05:31:12

And he worked with nv access as far as advice on the best accessible interface is concerned. I'm telling you, this thing is definitely no parlor trick. Literally everything is menu-driven and is clutter-free with no ads. And the windows and mobile interfaces are fairly consistent.

2018-04-05 06:27:49

Hi.
Did I get this right that this special blindy market place is only available in the united states and Canada at the moment?
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2018-04-05 06:33:10 (edited by jack 2018-04-05 06:37:01)

It's a new startup, so yes it is only available in the United States and Canada. He is looking to branch out to other countries hopefully soon. Just for the record, all this is is a storefront. This isn't Blind Mice, nothing against Blind Mice, but this is no special marketplace with specialized stores and the like. It's just an interface to access them. They are not mirroring the store's product database on paywithchip.com, they are having an application talk to these store's through mainstream and accepted api's. There are demos of it in action out there, so you can see for yourself.

2018-04-05 07:01:58 (edited by Jeffb 2018-04-05 07:03:38)

Wait and see what happens first before trying it out yourself. I think that is how Pay Pal and Venmo became reliable. If you want to try it out for yourself just be careful and keep an eye on your account until you feel it can be trusted. For me however I think this famous quote sums it up nicely.


“Ginny!" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain?"

The it in this case to me would be the cardreaders.

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2018-04-05 14:05:00

@Jeff

LOL! That post was so ridiculous that I couldn't believe the non sense. Have you done any research on these chip readers? Do you even know what you are talking about?

If you live in the US, ggo into any grocery store you like, and at every register is a terminal for customers to use their debit or credit cards. Every one of those terminals has the same chip reader this marketplace uses in it.

Do you have a dog or know someone who does. Did you have a chip implanted in it so it could be identified if its tags are missing? That is the very same RFI technology.

Do you have a smart phone? Do you know that they also have an RFI chip reader in them, the one in the iPhones is used for Apple Pay.

When it's released, the mobile will use these built in chip readers to read the chip on your card when you want to make a purchase.

This RFI technology you are railing against isn't new and is in fact everywhere.

2018-04-05 14:17:32 (edited by jack 2018-04-05 14:21:20)

Actually Orco, the phone will use a wireless version of the chip reader, but same technology. Although that does beg the question, will the app allow! you to use the existing rfi chip reader in them I wonder? And yes as I said before, these chipreaders are everywhere. Even the usb ones. Do your research as there's about 16 of them if you search on Amazon, and they're all between 7 and 12 bucks, nothing expensive. It seems that folks aren't willing to become enlightened on what may not be familiar to them, or if they are they will rip on something first. Again, you don't like it? Totally fine. Just keep the unfavorable comments out. I was gonna direct this dev to the forum thread so he could reiterate these answered questions for you that we tried to clear up, but with all this negative street-credit now I'm not sure if I want to. although, keep in mind this forum is so popular that it is in the google search, search by thread if you want to! And this thread was renamed Pay by Chip Marketplace. If someone searches and finds this thread with a host of comments ripping on the thing, do you think that potential user will want to use it? Think about that before dicking over a new development. And think about how awful Walmart's site accessibility is with screenreaderss and then you may see this thing for what it is.

2018-04-05 14:39:23

Take this for what it's worth, because I don't remember where I heard or read it.

The marketplace wanted to just use the RFI chip reader built into most smart phones so that their users wouldn't have to carry a chip reader around with them when using the mobile version of the marketplace app. But Apple was refusing to allow any developers outside their company to use that device. They claimed that it was to keep Apple Pay secure. So the marketplace started developing a wireless chip reader since it would be needed by iPhone users.

Apparently somebody proved to Apple that Apple Pay security wouldn't be compromised by allowing third parties to develop apps that used the RFI device, so Apple relented and is now allowing the marketplace and other developers to use it. So the wireless chip reader may no longer be entirely necessary, but by now the marketplace has invested enough into its development that they aren't going to stop now.

Anyway, there it is, I don't know where I got it so I can't say how credible it is.

2018-04-05 16:33:32

I will say if this marketplace ever gets to the Uk, an alternative interface for some supermarket ordering systems would be something I'd like, since generally most  supermarket websites over here for online orders, Iceland, Marks and Spencers asda etc are pretty cruddy in terms of their accessibility.

Heck, even tech shops like curry's tend to be rather annoying on their web interface (I recently tried to order something from curry's via amazon but when I was redirected to Curries own site I found them a pain in the arse, so on that matter I'd be  to give this a try even though I've not personally had problems with Amazon, and provided that if I did buy a Card reader  it would have other uses elsewhere online, for example donating  to charity or making credit card payments if I buy some credit on Alteraeon, particularly if such a card reader would indeed let me get the card number, expiry date and security code so that I would not need to ask the bank to read it for me.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-05 16:45:16

Hello everyone. My name is Michael Vinocur. I am the creator of the Pay With Chip Marketplace. I thought that before the thread get’s too far off track, and more importantly difficult for people to arrive at the needed information before deciding to try the marketplace, that I should chime in a bit. I want to start off by thanking the person who started this thread, as well as all of you that have chimed in one way or another. Whether you realize it or not, you are vital to the success of a project like this. I would like to start by clearing up a bit about what the marketplace is and what it is not. It is an interface that is designed to streamline and simplify the experience of finding and purchasing products available at major, as well as minor online retailers. It’s software and it’s hardware. We present each retailers website as an organized and consistent experience, regardless of the design or structure of that retailer’s website. We use a microchip payment card reader to facilitate a checkout, because it’s universally usable while presenting an experience that is as fast as saving payment info but safer. I’m going to make a few additional posts to keep the response organized and specific to the concern raised. It is my first time posting on this forum, so I beg your pardon if I run afoul of and y etiquette regarding post length.

2018-04-05 16:54:17 (edited by paywithchip 2018-04-05 16:55:05)

Why a payment card reader? We chose it because the technology is mature, developed in 1993 and through collaboration with payment organizations that basically invented all the payment infrastructure in use today. It’s stable and has no known exploits in the wild. We use a three way encryption wrapper, combined with a standards based API that allows different types of devices to interact with the reader over WIFI and soon BLE. So it can be used with an IOS device, an Alexa or Google Home, A PC, or an Apple TV or set-top box. Each reader is assigned to a customer. Only payment cards which belong to a customer are able to be used with the reader. This combines authentication with authorization, without adding time or steps to the transaction. A form of 2-factor. The software which run's on the reader, is updated regularly via over the air updates, allowing us to evolve the technology over time. The software layer of the payment card reader was designed by an engineer from Vantiv who volunteered her time with me to develop it starting in June of 2016. She has a Masters in Information Security and Cryptography and over 7 years in payment systems development. The hardware PCB was developed under a license template from HID, is PCI and EMV Level 1 compliant.

2018-04-05 17:04:21

How safe do we need to be while shopping online? That's a personal question. Online safety is in a tug of war with convenience and safety is losing. Size of an organization does not equal security. Lord and Taylor, Delta Airlines, Panera Bread, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Enterprise Rent a car, are just a few names on a list of breaches resulting in compromised payment data for 2018 that is just getting larger. The organizations don't have inferior technical departments, it's just that the business carriers risk and is made worse when it involves people. The ecommerce fraud market is expected to rival some economies as all of the effort from retail fraud in the US shifts to online fraud because of the transition here in the states to EMV/microchip. For reference, the US 2016 card fraud losses are 100 times larger than the runner up. All that energy has to go somewhere.

2018-04-05 17:13:18

Why not use Apple Pay? On the surface it sounds great. With a business lens, it is a horrible idea. First the cost of integrating with Apple Pay for transactions is high. They do not expose capabilities that allow for cross device utilization or open development, which means those things have to be developed from scratch or are prohibited all together. You then have to have two or more approaches to achieving the goal of checkout but with increased cost. Next is retailer permission. To integrate with Apple Pay, I also need the retailers to approve it. Many of them have agreements for more favorable terms if they do not engage in business that helps Apple. Finally growth potential. While I hear how great it is all the time, the data does not support it. Year over year adoption and repeat use growth is slowing and in some markets is declining. Merchant growth is flat year over year and in some markets is declining. It's also not available in all markets that we hope to have our software available.

2018-04-05 17:23:22

Where are we going and what are we doing? Doing business in different countries and retailers is not easy. Their are legal requirements that have to be satisfied and companies have to be a certain size to cost effectively do business in currencies other than dollars when they are not physically located in that country. We are aiming for a UK launch before the summer and a Canada launch before the Fall. Timelines may move up depending on how things unfold. The marketplace exited private use and became publically available in September 2017 with one experience, Walmart. It was incomplete and did not have the full catalog, but the interface presented such a different type of experience that people enjoyed it even with a fraction of what was available. Then we learned. We expanded to three stores, then 7, then 13, and now just about 40. We count Ebay, Walmart, Amazon, Petco, Brookstone, Best Buy among the most popular. The month of April will see us jump to 80 stores more or less with Macy's, Sams Club, Overstock.com joining us. With every update we learn how to make more stores accessible and easy to shop from, and we don't have to wait for them to make changes. They provide the data, and we do the rest.

2018-04-05 17:37:52

If there is anything else that I can answer, please let me know. I will be present for most of the day to answer any questions and address any concerns.

2018-04-06 02:15:22 (edited by haily_merry 2018-04-06 02:17:18)

Just saying, it might be better if you put all of what you want to say in one post.
Also remember there’s always the edit post feature if you want to add something.

2018-04-06 04:02:45

This sounds really cool! I'm going to try this out at some point tomorrow. Have you considered developing this for more platforms like macOS and iOS?

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2018-04-06 05:03:31

He told me in an email conversation that they eventually want to put it on other platforms. He also said that you have to start somewhere and Windows is by far the largest potential audience, so that is where they started.

2018-04-06 05:17:49

It's already on windows and android, and he's planning to have it on osx, ios, and Linux as well.

2018-04-06 12:11:59 (edited by paywithchip 2018-04-06 16:09:42)

@DarfVader Noted, will definitely do a better job going forward. Thank you for the feedback.

@Chris, yes other platforms are in the works.

@Orko and @jack you two both have it right.

2018-04-12 00:29:07

If you've seen my other thread about learning and exploring the Google Home assistant, you know that I bought a Google Home Max. Unfortunately, it proved to have a problem with the Voice Match feature in that it would not accept the training data for a Voice Match profile.

Not sure if this was due to a hardware fault or a software glitch, I decided to send it back for an exchange, figuring that if the new one had the same Voice Match problem, then it was more than likely a software glitch that Google will have to fix in a future update.

Anyway, I bought the Max from BestBuy through the PayByChip marketplace, it was actually my first order through the marketplace, so I contacted them using the help section of themarketplace software. They have been very responsive and helpful in arranging with Best Buy  to get me a return authorization for an exchange for a new Max. I am very pleased with them. Their customer service compares very favorably against Amazon's which has frequently disappointed me with flowery, canned responses that did nothing to resolve my issues.

2018-04-12 00:56:14

Hey Orko.

That voice match issue is  a problem with the app, not the device. I've run into it myself, and I've also seen people mentioning it elsewhere.

If a helicopter falls in the field and no one's around, it doesn't make a sound.

2018-04-12 04:10:26

Thanks! That's good to know. I wish I'd known that before initiating the return for exchange, I miss having a digital assistant around.