Posted on 09/27/2020 9:11:07 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
In one of the DUMBEST ideas ever, Walmart has stopped accepting Samsung Pay. In other Walmart is now forcing us to use our physical credit cards rather than the much more secure method of Samsung Pay. Not only that we are now also forced to have another level of physical contact during the pandemic with Walmart via the process of physically inserting a credit card into their payment machines.
My strong suspicion is that Walmart has taken this DUMB move in order to hype their Walmart Card because every time I complain about Samsung Pay being blocked an employee uses that as an opportunity to mention that a Walmart Card is available and points to the promo on the payment screen.
Sorry, Walmart, but taking Samsung Pay hostage in order to promote your store card is one of the WORST corporate decisions ever. It just angers your loyal customers such as myself.
I am hoping that Walmart awakens from its utter stupidity on this and RESTORES Samsung Pay.
It’s not a big deal. My card has never been hacked. And stuff doesn’t fall out of my wallet.
They charge no fees to YOU. Duh.
I don’t think they do point of sales out of the goodness of their hearts. Trust me, in the POS business—EVERYONE takes a piece of the action.
I did point of purchase negotiations for a large regional bank. After my orientation about debit cards and ACH transmittal, I went back to my boss and asked if the mafia knew about this process. It’s parts of pennies on the dollar, but it adds up to billions a year. It all comes off the back end.
I used to sell photos online. Did you really think that the $20 you sent on a web site is what the guy on the other end gets? Not even remotely close. The same holds true after all of the point of sale fees. The consumer never sees it. The vendor certainly does.
Having worked in the commercial retail sector in IT, I can tell you that statement is false. The POS system owners carry all of the liability for their devices. You think Lowe’s was on the hook for their breach back in the 2010s?
I always pay with cash where ever I shop. Cannot be tracked or traced.
They don’t charge you a fee. They MOST DEFINITELY charge vendors. That’s the thing with all these credit cards and semi-credit cards. It’s very expensive for a vendor. You’ve got to pay your POS vendor to take, it costs you IT dollars to process it because everybody is a little different, and all the card companies charge you to get money from them. Most charge you both an annual fee and transactional fee. When there were 3 credit card companies in the world that wasn’t a big deal. But now there’s a dozen, and growing. Companies, especially companies that live on razor thin margins like WalMart, will be making choices. They have to.
For now. Many places are starting to say 'No cash', because of a purported 'coin shortage'.
That’s not the point. Walmart has plenty of buying power to dictate what payment methods they once supported in their POS systems are still supported.
I am a Samsung user because I hate Apple, but with a Samsung device you are not nearly as limited to what you can install. Hell, you never used to be able to install a Wifi connection checker in an iPhone. Crazy stuff.
That being said, Samsung pay for me is really easy to use on my watch. I don’t have to reach into pocket and when you forget your wallet, no problem.
I was going to say that I thought Samsung has some assembly in China, so both Apple and Samsung suck, but I guess only Apple uses concentration camp slave labor to assemble their phones of the big two:
“Samsung actually shut down its last remaining smartphone factory in China this year. As of 2019, the company is not making any phones in the People’s Republic. It previously had two factories in China but as Samsung’s market share fell below 1% in the country, it had to scale back production. It no longer makes financial sense for Samsung to manufacture phones in China. Which is why it has now stopped doing that.”
https://www.sammobile.com/where-are-samsung-phones-made
PS: They (Apple) gets a discount of said concentration camp slave labor by helping the CCP track down people who resist the CPP, so it is a Win-Win for totalitarians.
Me personally, I'm still stuck on the debit card. And I'm still getting used to "the chip" on cards and laser scanners for ringing up groceries. Amazing huh?
But what happened to the paper grocery bags and the guy with the wax pencil who weighs and marks your produce poke? Where are they hiding them???
You take your car to the shop. They tell you that your water pump needs to be replaced. You decide not to replace it and keep adding fluid to your radiator. When your car breaks down, do you blame the auto manufacturer for a faulty water pump? How about the repair shop for not insisting that you need to replace the water pump?
If a POS vendor tells a retailer they have to cut support until a vulnerability, do you think the retailer insists on continuing to use that payment source? I guarantee they’re going to insulate themselves from liability, to hell what the public thinks.
I’m just saying that there are likely technical reasons for the change. It’s not done to spite you. It’s done to protect them.
If Walmart really cared and wanted Samsung pay still, they would have it. They aren’t your run of the mill retail client and thwir POS provider is not going to be allowed to go in and add or take away payment options on their own particular whim or preference.
I use Apple Pay exclusively on my Apple Watch. I don’t think I’ve ever used the phone itself to pay for something, because the watch is so much more convenient.
I am sure that if the Nazi’s concentration camps produced something convenient there would have been a lot of buyers back then too.
The difference is that the conditions in the Nazi slave camps were not well known prior to the end of WWII.
The same can’t be said for the CCP concentration camps.
And probably the company that was selling them wouldn’t have been contributing a good share of their profits back into anit-American socialist front groups like BLM like Apple does.
“more secure method of Samsung Pay? Really?”
Anything involving a smart phone is by design inherently insecure.
Samsung did temporarily stop phone production in China, but many other of their brand name products including all of their tablets, TVs, and appliances and made in China.
Your assertion that Apple gets some kind of "discount" for a non-existing "concentration camp slave labor by helping the CCP track down people who resist the CPP" is completely a lie.
Apple does not contract with the CCP or even any Chinese company to assemble any of its products, although some of them are assembled in China, as are the products of over 750 other consumer electronics makers around the world. Apple contracts with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., publicly trading as Foxconn Technology Group and better known as Foxconn, a Taiwanese multinational corporation not at all owned by China! The have some Apple products (iPads) made by another Taiwanese multinational, Pegatron International. iPhones are also assembled in Brazil, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and the parts for them are made in over 180 nations around the world, including the USA. Apple computers are manufactured in China, Vietnam, Ireland, California, and Texas.
Apple receives NO discount for labor rates in China and in fact is documented to pay workers on the assembly lines where Apple products are made between 50% to 75% better wages than any workers on any other makers’ CE products, and to require, in the master contract, better working conditions. . . this is why when openings are available on Apple assembly lines, workers, including those from other lines, queue up by the thousands to apply for work on Apple’s lines!
Apple maintains its own Apple Inc. employees at every shift and plant to monitor worker pay, take worker complaints, and assure working conditions. No other CE maker does that to assess working conditions of their contracts.
Android phones only use App level encryption, not hardware, so cannot be as secure. The same holds true for Walmart-Pay. In addition, both track purchases. Apple doesn’t care. Your privacy is more important to Apple as they don’t market users’ data to third-party marketers.
I can’t understate how trivial it is to compromise a public system with Mack-truck-sized vulnerabilities. Payment systems are NOT immune. I’d rather they err on the side of caution.
SamsungPay is a smaller subset of all the Android phone market segment. Android and Google offer GooglePay. Walmart bought into CurrentC, a now defunct Wallet System that had very complex system setup issues, and high startup wall fees. . . Walmart morphed CurrentC.
Walmart’s system assigns a customer unique Q code which displays on the users phone and is read by the POS machine to enable customer ID and authorize transactions. This is inherently insecure as anyone in the area could photograph it. Perhaps they’ve now added NFC to avoid those inherent flaws. But they’re primarily interested in customer tracking. It only works at Walmart stores.
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