Chase Cuts Deal With Best Buy, Loses Mobile Password
Look for Chase Pay at the POS at your local Best Buy, just in time for this year’s U.S. holiday shopping season, Chase announced Sept. 14. The in-store and online move for the QR-code-displaying payments system follows ChasePay deals with Phillips 66 and Starbucks.
Compared with Apple Pay, Chase Pay has some key differences. On the plus side, a QR Code approach—which is what Walmart Pay is using—can work on older POS systems and can work on almost any smartphone. Chase Pay also is charging merchants a lower interchange fee than if that same card was swiped or dipped. On the down side, Apple Pay and Android Pay will automatically work on any NFC POS system whereas retailers need to individually sign up for Chase Pay. Chase Pay also is limited not to just Chase customers, but to only Chase customers using a Chase Visa card that is not a corporate card.
Perhaps the most significant challenge for Chase Pay is speed and convenience. Apple Pay, for example, merely requires the shopper to place the phone next to the card reader and to touch the home button for a fingerprint scan. Chase Pay requires the user to find the app, open the app, select the area for payment and to then select payment method. That will generate the QR code, which must be shown to the store associate, who will then scan it. In places that will accept both Chase Pay and Apple Pay in-store—such as Starbucks—the speed differences will feel stark.
Chase this week also made a noteworthy security move. On Sept. 12, JPMorgan Chase—without announcing it—reversed its security position on its mobile app, removing the need to type in a password once a customer has already been authenticated by either Apple’s Touch ID or an Android biometric scan, according to a report in Computerworld. Before Monday, Chase customers could log in using a biometric scan and see things such as balances but needed to authenticate themselves again with a password for transferring funds or making a payment. Now the biometric scan is sufficient for all bank functions.
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