Update 10/3/19: This will be powered by Finablr.
Citi has sent out an e-mail to cardholders with a cardholder saved on Samsung Pay letting them know that Samsung Pay will begin allowing customers to complete international money transfers later this year. If you use your Citi card for this service it will be treated as a cash advance. As far as I know Samsung Pay hasn’t released any details on how these international money transfers will work, or what the fees involved will be but it looks like using a credit card for these transfers will not be possible.
Hat tip to reader Jhonattan
If you REALLY want to send money with a CC (and the Samsung Pay app allows it), you can potentially do it and minimize the cash advance fees. The trick is to ‘overpay’ your bill.
In other words if you treat your CC as a checking account and your balance is zero and you ‘pay’ $300, your balance will show as -$300. Assuming the cash advance fee is 5% with $5 minimum, you will then be able to send $294 and your balance will become zero. There is no balance to apply the high interest the bank would charge to a cash advance (which starts on the day of the transaction), so there is no interest charge.
Not that any of this makes sense financially. Just saying that people forget that a CC can potentially be used just like a checking account.
Based on the notice from Citi, it *does* look like sending cash via cc will be possible — just stupidly expensive with cash advance fees.
I don’t know why anyone would trust Samsung or Samsung pay to “remit” money Int’l, esp when so many other options exist that actually have a modicum of Customer service.
I think I would pay $30 to wire money at a local bank before I would trust SPay – esp in light of all the data breeches. With Spay and CC you at least have the issuer covering fraud.
If a big financial institution such as Capital One has data breach, it’s only a matter of time a mistake is made there as well.
Whenever you’re using samsung pay you’re already trusting samsung with your payment information. Many people use samsung pay on a day to day basis.
The key factor here we don’t know yet (the fees). I already have and use samsung pay extensively so there’s no extra harm for me. If they charge me less than X app to send money, you better believe I will use samsung pay
I use S-pay regularly (but not Debit) – its a small hassle if your CC is used fraudulently, your covered by Visa/MC and/or Issuer.
Few protections for Int’l ACH and can be a huge hassle if an acct is drained – read some of the T&C of ( why a pin or two factor thru a Local CU if your going to send money Int’l. Local branch, local people in person no text or phone e to try to resolve an issue.
compare to google pay “Customer service”, i prefer the samsung one.