- Joined
- Oct 13, 2010
- Messages
- 10,803
I got an email from "Fidelity Investments Credit Card" (Elan Visa) that was urging me to use Google Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. I guess the benefit to the credit card issuer is a more secure transaction?
My limited research took me to https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/apple-pay-finally-102362.html , where I learned that if you enroll a card in one of the "*Pay" apps, then using it acts exactly as if you used the physical card (get the rewards points, shows the same on the CC statement, all the same as if you used the physical card).
So what's in it for Google or Apple or Samsung? It can't be the "holy grail" of getting the leeching credit card companies out of the middle of things (yeah, it's all "free", and they give us "free money" with the rewards, but we're all paying higher prices for it). Of course this won't work unless some more efficient payment method gives even more cash back than the credit cards are giving. But I digress.
With respect to downloading Google Pay and enrolling my Elan card, I'm not convinced it's worth it. I don't mind putting my card into the machine, and in fact, these days, I don't bring my phone into the store (harder to clean than the card is). And "yet another app" on my phone that probably won't get hacked, but it's a juicy target, so I wouldn't be surprised if some day one of these apps need an emergency update.
One attribute that would be worth it is to use it overseas to avoid having to sign or type a pin or to use in a kiosk. THAT would be valuable, but I'm not signing up for Google Pay now in order to make overseas travel easier now, for obvious reasons.
So I've gone on many more tangents that I intended to here. Primarily interested in the motivation of the app providers business model. Maybe the leeching CC middle men are throwing the app providers some scraps?
My limited research took me to https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/apple-pay-finally-102362.html , where I learned that if you enroll a card in one of the "*Pay" apps, then using it acts exactly as if you used the physical card (get the rewards points, shows the same on the CC statement, all the same as if you used the physical card).
So what's in it for Google or Apple or Samsung? It can't be the "holy grail" of getting the leeching credit card companies out of the middle of things (yeah, it's all "free", and they give us "free money" with the rewards, but we're all paying higher prices for it). Of course this won't work unless some more efficient payment method gives even more cash back than the credit cards are giving. But I digress.
With respect to downloading Google Pay and enrolling my Elan card, I'm not convinced it's worth it. I don't mind putting my card into the machine, and in fact, these days, I don't bring my phone into the store (harder to clean than the card is). And "yet another app" on my phone that probably won't get hacked, but it's a juicy target, so I wouldn't be surprised if some day one of these apps need an emergency update.
One attribute that would be worth it is to use it overseas to avoid having to sign or type a pin or to use in a kiosk. THAT would be valuable, but I'm not signing up for Google Pay now in order to make overseas travel easier now, for obvious reasons.
So I've gone on many more tangents that I intended to here. Primarily interested in the motivation of the app providers business model. Maybe the leeching CC middle men are throwing the app providers some scraps?