Last year Samsung Pay cut the amount of rewards you earned in half, while also making redemptions less valuable. You can now earn a maximum of 3 points per transaction, down from 20 points per transaction (and this was originally 40 points per transaction). Although rewards earned on gift card purchases has actually been slightly increased. The program was almost worthless but now it’s even worse.
Hat tip to reader Jonathan P
As I’ve said with previous devaluations, I’ll continue to use it even just for the convenience and added security. As stupid as it would be for Samsung to ditch MST, I fear they will eventually stop building it into their phones, and move to relying solely on NFC. I sure AF hope I’m wrong, given the fact so few retailers in an average U.S. location want to shell out for NFC terminals. I’m virtually positive the S10 series have MST, but you’d be hard pressed to find it mentioned in the specs….at least in all the googling I did.
Not even worth it anymore….ugh.
I absolutely love Samsung Pay and I’ve never really thought of using it for the Rewards as the main reason. It’s just still by far, the best Mobile Pay/Wallet app ever. I used to use Google Pay a lot back then before I upgraded my phone to a Samsung phone that supports Samsung Pay but now, not having to rely on NFC and the fact that Samsung Pay works virtually almost everywhere even on older card reader machines, it’s the main reason for me to keep using it.
I’ve forgotten and left behind my wallet a few times and simply survived because of Samsung Pay. Samsung sure has a lot of junk bloatware apps, but Samsung Pay is their best app ever.
I agree that the rewards program is worthless now. I am not sure why they bother to keep it around with it being nearly impossible to generate enough points to actually redeem for anything other than a chance to win something.
However, it is still the best mobile wallet by far. I use it because I don’t carry 10 cards around.
Still the altitude reserve combined with this rocks
Still the altitude reserve combined with this rocks
Will be interesting to see if they bring the redemption options down.
I doubt they will –
Abhirup I imagine that too many people are still sitting on piles of points that were difficult to redeem for anything of value.
And this is Samsung were talking about – which rarely does anything that’s in the favor of its consumers.
So jts honestly a huge Devaluation, it was fun while it lasted and I still do CB offers and occasional GC.
I know, I for one am sitting like a duck with 20k points 🙁
Points expire a month at a time when they become 12 months old.
While this sucks, lets not forget how good discounted gift cards can be. 10-15% off lowes, 5-15% ebay, etc…plus they added cash back portal (remember 40% of bestbuy/walmart). forget the rewards.
Don’t remind people not to uninstall. The less those GCs are purchased, the more stays available for the rest of us or better discounts show up.
Still excellent to have for the Altitude Reserve.
Only two reasons to keep the app installed;
1) my wife can use my CSR without being an authorized user.
2) it can be useful for the Samsung portal to get money back. They actually have good deals there sometimes.
I haven’t bought GC in Spay since before the devaluation in Jan 2018.
Had to use Card @ IKEA last month cashier so corporate said no more SPay, GPay or Apple pay because of Fraud -which sounds like BS – cause of the hoops to activate in wallet and Biometric requirement on phone.
Honestly if it wasn’t for the on chip Knox secure folder – I would probably be using a different brand phone. Used to be huge fan of Samsung now will only buy Samsung phones and only through Costco (Kiosk). No more appliances, or memory products or computer products.
It’s definitely BS, because the security requirements for setting up and then actually authenticating a point of sale transaction are way higher than pulling out a card than anyone can pay with.
But it’s easier for them to match last4 to the receipt to the name to the photo ID to the face in front of them. When I get asked for ID using samsung pay (chase pay 5% quarter), I have to show them the phone, both numbers, the physical card, the photo ID…
That’s about the only thing I can think of.
That 30% best buy deal was fantastic plus they were able to send a check of the balance of the card instead if having to use it.
For the cashback most of the time you pay directly the merchant, but yeah, agree they have good deals…same with discounted gift cards
not USB Altitude?