I’ve added my Amex card to Android Pay and Samsung Pay and have noticed that they seem to have access to my Amex transaction list.
I didn’t grant them permission and I’m not bothered, it’s actually quite cool - but I don’t get what’s it’s doing. Is it using APIs or are Android/Samsung Pay hijacking the notifications from the Amex app?
Anyone else noticed this?
If I make an online or physical transaction with my Amex card (NOT using Android or Samsung Pay), I immediately get a notification from Android Pay AND Samsung Pay.
I knew about this feature in the Amex app and it works kind of intermittently - but these notifications aren’t coming from the Amex app, they’re coming from the Android Pay and Samsung Pay apps - even when I use my actual card and not my phone to pay.
I can’t find this as a documented feature anywhere.
By turning on purchase alerts, you will receive a push notification when there is purchase activity on your Card. Purchase activity includes purchases made with your plastic Card or a mobile wallet, as well as pre-authorisations made on your Card by merchants like petrol stations and hotels, which are temporary and subject to change. If you also have notifications for this Card enabled in a mobile wallet, you may receive more than one notification.
There’s no other real explanation. It’s been happening on iOS ever since Apple Pay started, whenever I use my physical card or make an online transaction it shows up on my phone.
This is very unofficial information from a few friends at another company but American Express present one unified transaction list in the Apple Pay and Android Pay mini-statement.
One of the reasons behind this is so that you could see purchases you made with an Apple Watch or iPad in the mini-statement on your iPhone. American Express made the design decision that to the end user, you had one logical American Express card that was the same everywhere, rather than having split notifications and mini-statements for each device.
I actually really like it - just weird that no mention was made and no request for permission.
Where is it getting the transactions from? Is it being requested behind the scenes or is it the apps interacting with each other? I didn’t even know it was possible yet.
It’s a really good idea - you can basically view your complete recent transaction list in either/any of the apps and it’s the same.
I’d be very happy if Monzo enabled this - you could have your balance displayed in the corner of the card (like the Tesco points balance) and a full transaction list, including transactions made with the physical card!
Although maybe with a bit more notice and transparency.
Apologies if someone else has already mentioned it, those are indeed coming from Amex as they don’t differentiate plastic cards from tokens in terms of transactions made and therefore notifications in your statements, including notifications and the transaction list within Samsung Pay, or any other Pay for that matter.
This is not coming from the Amex Pay app which you might or might not have installed on your device, it’s coming from the Amex backend system - and customers in general like it as it gives them real time alerts and control of all their Amex transactions, either offline or online.
What’s a bit unfortunate is that you also receive the pre-authorisations, e.g. £1.00 for Uber or Amazon or £0.10 for TfL, and many users don’t really know what that is and that the merchant won’t actually charge for that transaction.
I haven’t tried Monzo on Android Pay as I use Samsung Pay, I guess Android Pay would only give notifications for transactions made using your Monzo card token on Android Pay as this is how the connectivity between Monzo (or any other bank) and MDES should be implemented.
