The Confusing Side Of Chase Pay

When Chase rolled out Chase Pay late last year, it risked customer confusion because it was adding a new payment mechanism to the Chase mobile packages already offered. Chase customers already have a Chase Visa card and, based on Chase’s recommendation, more than a million of those cards are already loaded into Apple Pay. Now Chase Pay will be automatically added to the Chase mobile app that already has 21 million active Chase customers, which guarantees there will be a significant overlap with the users of Apple Pay. The goal of Chase Pay is to have all 21 million Chase customers use Chase Pay with their existing Chase-issued credit, debit, and prepaid cards for in-store payments, which of course means they will need to learn how to use Chase Pay.

Cardholders will retain all the same rewards and consumer protections using Chase Pay as they have with their existing cards. Currently the Chase web site identifies the primary benefit as merchant discounts. But Chase customers that already have Chase cards provisioned into Apple Pay or Android Pay will confront an impossibly confusing choice relative to acceptance. Since Chase Pay will have a limited acceptance footprint that is different than the limited footprint associated with the NFC-based competitors, it strikes Mercator that a customer will simply become even more unsure what mobile app is accepted at which merchant locations and will revert instead to the tried and true physical card.