Discover Now Allows You To Use Your Cashback Balance Via Apple Pay

Discover has rolled out a new redemption option, cardholders can now use Apple Pay to use their cashback balance to pay for everyday items. It works as follows:

  • Select Discover card in Apple Pay and make a qualifying purchase
  • Select ‘Tap for Details’ under the Discover redemption message in Apple Wallet
  • Tap redeem your Cashback Bonus as a statement credit in the amount of your purchase

It won’t work for T-mobile customers (unless your device is connected to WiFi). Discover is trying to position this as the first ever apple pay rewards feature. Not sure I’d exactly call this Apple Pay rewards, but maybe it means they have plans to add other features as well. For me this is a nothing addition, you can already redeem your Discover cash back for statement credit this is just giving you the option to do this at the time of purchase. I don’t think there is any particular advantage to applying rewards to certain purchases and not others, I guess the upside is that when users are redeeming they get the feeling of “that was free thanks to Discover!!” rather than just taking $X amount off their statement. Redeeming for cash back isn’t always the best option either.

Personally I’d prefer Discover to focus on features and benefits that have a more practical application as I think this is where Discover has an advantage other card issuers with things like:

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NinjaX
NinjaX (@guest_492372)
October 11, 2017 19:41

oh man… this is NOT gonna end well…

NinjaX
NinjaX (@guest_492442)
October 11, 2017 21:45

nevermind. thot this was discover 1.5 miles where ur usually forced to credit only travel purchases. so i thot this was a loophole to bypass that. the normal discover card already lets u deposit into bank account. so thats a better option vs paying with apple pay cuz u miss out on the CC points.

Peter
Peter (@guest_492488)
October 11, 2017 22:57

Yep redeeming this way is a gain for Discover and a loss for cardholder since you miss out on earning additional Cashback Bonus from the new purchase when you instead redeem earned Cashback Bonus to pay for the transaction directly.

Peter
Peter (@guest_492756)
October 12, 2017 10:15

Oh yeah Will, you are right. I wasn’t reading carefully.

NinjaX
NinjaX (@guest_492915)
October 12, 2017 14:12

i wasnt reading carefully either, but u are right. u miss out on the CC points because the only way to use this discover apple pay crap is to actually use the discover card via apple pay for the purchase then you do a statement credit. well, not every purchase is going to be discover 5% cat. so if u want to use another CC then u cant even apply the statement credit let alone only getting 1% from discover for anything outside the 5%.

Lrdx
Lrdx (@guest_492574)
October 12, 2017 01:27

You can deposit “miles” from the It Miles card to a bank account since day 1.

Yes, statement credit is only applicable against travel charges.

I don’t see the logic in this either.