Mobile wallet & additional MR earn categories (Plat Edge, DJ Amex, etc)

[sudoer]

Just a PSA for anyone holding an Amex card which earns additional points from supermarkets & petrol stations - using a mobile wallet (Google Pay / Apple Pay) at the point of sale may render your transaction ineligible for the additional points.

I noticed today that a recent purchase from BP had only earned 1 MR per dollar instead of the expected 3 MR. I had filled up at this exact BP two weeks prior and earned the additional points then. Receipts from both transactions confirmed the same merchant facility was used and it was still a BP.

The 3 MR transaction description appeared on my statement as 'BP', whereas the 1 MR transaction appeared as the Pty Ltd company name of the franchisee. The only difference between the two transactions was using mobile wallet instead of the physical card.

I raised the discrepancy with Amex via live chat, who advised using a mobile wallet was the cause and pointed me to this line in the T&C:

Additional points for major supermakets, petrol stations and foreign currency may not apply when you use a payment account, payment aggregator, services of a third party or online retailers that sell goods for another merchant. For example a payment made to a major supermarket processed through a payment aggregator may not earn the additional points.

I hadn't realised this potential downside to using a mobile wallet, and I pointed out to the rep that I'd used mobile wallet at Woolworths several times and earned the additional points. They didn't believe this was true until I gave them some exact transactions details - they then conceded that it must only affect certain merchants and credited the missing MR for my BP transaction as a once-off goodwill gesture.

Given the additional points earn is one of the key features of the Plat Edge & David Jones cards, and Amex actively promote using these cards via mobile wallet, I thought it worth sharing my experience to hopefully prevent anyone else getting caught out!

 

[Coops1]

Google Pay is not a payment aggregator. Something else is broken.

 

[kyle]

I use Samsung Pay at BP. I think I had an issue once and the additional points were credited and haven't had a problem since. My card is DJ Amex.

 

[bernardblack]

I routinely get the appropriate merchant-category bonuses when using Samsung Pay, and pretty sure on Google Pay when I've intermittently used it too. However a certain BP near me has the name of the franchisee on the card stuff and can be hit-or-miss with fuel. I seem to recall it's been OK for a while though.

 

[madrooster]

This issue appears periodically and needs to be reported. Samsung/Apple/Google Pay are not payment aggregators. Payment aggregators are the likes of Square, Stripe, PayPal etc.

Using a digital wallet used to also render your spend ineligible for Local Champion as well.

 

[_flyer]

Funny you mention this, I enquired with Amex why I wasn’t awarded a statement credit (it’s happened 3x recently). I was told by the operator that Apple Pay was a payment processor/aggregator and that I had to pay with the card directly. She told me payments through the mobile wallet no longer qualify. I told her I thought this only applied to the likes of PayPal and she explicitly said no and informed me it included Apple Pay. I asked for the matter to be escalated, but haven’t heard back. I have always paid with Apple Pay and received the statement credits, but apparently this is not allowed anymore. I was very surprised. Either Amex is having issues or they are don’t want people using mobile payments anymore.

 

[kyle]

Using a digital wallet used to also render your spend ineligible for Local Champion as well.

That explains why some of my Kingpin transactions didn't register.