Smart card Edge has bought the remaining assets of Plastc, which folded in April.
Yes, smart cards are still around — sort of. The idea behind many of them was that multiple cards could be loaded by mobile app, and deployed as the situation demanded, based on rewards or merchant offers. The most famous smart card, Coin, raised millions in presales but had problems with execution and delivery, and was bought by FitBit (or at least “key personnel and technology” from it was) and now has a new life in Mastercard’s IoT strategy. But Coin lookalike Plastc never got off the ground, and failed to ship cards to its more than 60,000 pre-order customers.
Another smart card, Magnises, had a posh Manhattan residence for its users and was the brainchild of Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland. McFarland had an interesting fall, facing charges for wire fraud and defrauding investors. Part of Fyre Festival was apparently meant to prop up the struggling black card, which flamed out in August.
Yet around the same time, another smart card called Fuze raised more than $2 million in pre-orders on Indiegogo. Possibly cheered by this vote of confidence, Edge founder Peter Garrett is bullish on his company’s prospects and cards in general versus NFC-based mobile payments. As he explained to TechCrunch, “This whole overnight shift to NFC was just bullshit. It wasn’t going to happen.”
He later clarified that mobile payments may work out, but it will take five or ten years. Edge does not rely on pre-orders, but rather venture funds. It has raised $1 million and seeks another $10 million in an upcoming Series A round.
Read more in TechCrunch, The Mercury News and Fortune.
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