This is cool, but a part of me has to be flip, and humanity is kind of hilarious to me. All of this amazing infrastructure and hard work to essentially just very carefully and accurately subtract one number from another in a way that makes auditing easy.

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mikepurvis 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Rebuilding the full payments network from scratch was a significant, multi-year effort. It involves complex processing logic, extensive edge cases, and exception handling."

Quite apart from fraud/abuse prevention, I expect part of this is stuff like juggling all the different rewards and points systems plus handling time-based offers ("spend $x at y retailer by z date, get $10 cash back" type thing) plus ensuring that all those things are correctly unwound in the case of refunds being issued.

As someone who recently got an Amex card (primarily for Air Canada lounge access), I've been impressed at how nice their app is compared to the five previous Canadian bank apps I've been exposed to in recent years (Scotia, BMO, RBC, Tangerine, CIBC). Some nice things I noticed in the Amex CA app that I haven't previously experienced:

- instant alerts on use, even when it was a non mobile pay transaction

- up to the minute transaction history in-app, including Aeroplan point accrual; all my other credit cards have a delay before new items appear.

- an in-app button to debit my bank for the balance without me having to go to my bank's app to send a bill pay.

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TMWNN 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

>- an in-app button to debit my bank for the balance without me having to go to my bank's app to send a bill pay.

?!? Are you saying that Amex is the first Canadian credit card you've used to let you make the payment from on its app, with Amex pulling the funds from your bank? Other Canadian credit cards all require you to "push" payments to them via your bank's billpay? This astounds me.

	▲	mikepurvis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		My RBC cards let me pay from an RBC account within the RBC app, but for example I also have the Costco MasterCard issued by CIBC and there's no feature in the CIBC app to pull a payment from another bank for it. Same with everything else: power, water, taxes, mortgage, all of these I have to look up the number and arrange a bill-pay push, I think only my mobile and internet provider are able to just debit my bank acct directly.

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quesera 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple Card has the same features, currently issued and operated by Goldman Sachs but to be transferred to Chase within the next two years. Hopefully the features and functionality will survive. I don't think Chase has them today, so I wonder.

It's atrocious how bad most bank and card apps are. I'm planning a switch to a new bank, and mobile app quality is a huge criterion. Bank of America and Wells Fargo get zero points from me.

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jamiemallers 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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