HACKER Q&A
📣 gouthampro3

Apple, Google, Samsung wallet, why aren't there any better alternatives


I'm trying to wrap my head around why there isn't a wallet app that auto selects card to pay based on the merchant you are paying yet. Most people I know have 5+ credit cards and only use one card to tap everywhere not bothering about rotating rewards on other cards that could give them better cash back. Why they have other cards? So that they can have them on standby and use them incase they have to make a bigger purchase.

So I why didn't someone tap into this market? Because I know banks make same if not more money even if customers avail these extra rewards. Whats stopping apple or google from adding this feature. Whats stopping anyone else from entering this market and competing to tapping into this niche? Because it is totally possible given visa master card and amex provide the APIs for it and there is virtually not much technical magic needed to pull this off.

Would you use a wallet that could

1. Auto-select card that gives you maximum rewards at a given vendor/merchant 2. Suggest a better card based on your spending pattern 3. Auto-select card based on your spending pattern (sometimes accumulating points and buying planes tickets is much more lucrative) 4. More interesting UI than Google Pay/Apple Pay

Would you use this service? or even more, pay 25 bucks a year for this service?

  👤 solardev Accepted Answer ✓
Is there even an API that lets you do this (store virtual cards for tap to pay) outside of the wallets? Would it be PCI compliant?

I would use and pay for such a service. Not to optimize points, but to be able to use different cards for different merchants, and also to skip the annoying confirmation that Android Wallet requires before I tap.

👤 scarface_74
First get your head out of the r/creditcards/ThePointsGuy bubble. Most people aren’t fooling around with multiple cards trying to eke out which card gives them the best multiplier and keeping track of rotating categories BS.

I know the game - unlike most people - and even I got tired of worrying about multipliers and which card to use.

All my spend either goes on the card I’m trying to get a sign up bonus for or my Delta Reserve to get MQDs toward Platinum Medallion.

For instance, I can worry about juggling multiple cards for points, or I can just sign up for a Chase Ink card and get 90K points by spending $8000 in 3 months. The alternative is spending $30K to $90K chasing multipliers. (https://johnnyafrica.com/multiple-chase-ink-business-cards/)

I use to talk to my friends about my credit card optimization strategy when I did it. They still just said they would use their one card.

And banks don’t make money from credit card optimizers

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wells-fargo-may-pull-plug-113...

The goal for credit card companies is for a consumer to have their one card as top of wallet. Any point multiplier over 3x - especially for cash back cards - is a lost leader hoping that you will use the card for all of the 1x categories.