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Simon Mall has reached out today to let us know that beginning on Monday, October 26, 2020, malls will be able to accept mobile contactless payments, including things like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay and the sort. They will also offer e-receipts, which will be terrific for keeping organized.
This is obviously great news for those who don’t want to carry their entire wallet to Simon Mall. This will be a nice increase in convenience.
Furthermore, it obviously creates some opportunities when you see a bonus for mobile wallet payments. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is the US Bank Altitude Reserve given that it earns 3x on mobile wallet purchases for an effective 4.5% back when using the points to book travel with US Bank or when using Real-time mobile rewards.
That said, US Bank was at least initially very sensitive to gift card purchases, with reports of shut downs for just a couple of $500 cards. I’m not sure whether or not that sensitivity has continued, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t like such large mobile wallet purchases.
Still, this is great news. I also love the fact that Simon is going to offer email receipts. You will have the option of both print and email if you’d like, though note that you may need to request the e-receipt the first couple of times as this will be totally new for malls. The good news is that once your email address is associated with a specific credit card, you won’t need to re-enter the email address for that card in the future. If you split tender over multiple cards, you’ll need to input your email address for each new card you use, but once you’ve got all of your cards associated with an email address that should speed things up.
Again, this is all pretty good news for those who can and want to purchase on-mall.
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Hi Nick,
I would like to take advantage of the Amex Simply 5% of $500 purchase. Do you know if Amex still not giving out points for Simon Mall purchases?
I’m not aware of any change on that.
[…] Simon Mall to take contactless payments (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, etc) […]
I’d love to know if this worked for the Altitude card but I won’t be taking the risk myself.
Can you add a gift card to a mobile wallet to pay for a money order at a grocery store or walmart? That would be a game changer for sure!
Haven’t tried recently, but historically no
Can you get them with your name on them at the mall? I would rather pay the extra $10 fee online to have my name on them, I pick the Black ones online, its very hard to see the word gift card on them and I show them my License and VGC and never have any problems.
Is guest services open at some Simon malls? They are still closed at several Simon malls in my area, so haven’t been able to purchase any $1K GCs. Maybe it’s a local/regional thing?
“This is obviously great news for those who don’t want to carry their entire wallet to Simon Mall.”
Yeah, it’s such a terrible burden having to carry around that heavy, heavy wallet everywhere. My gawd, how do people manage? Oh the humanity.
LOL. I think it’s safe to say that you took that a bit more dramatically than intended.
When my wife and I go to Simon to buy the max each, we’re often each splitting tender over 4-5 cards. Those aren’t always the cards that we would otherwise carry in our wallets, so if we didn’t need to carry around that extra 8 or 10 cards (and we could also have some additional back-up cards in case something gets declined without having to carry those cards around also), that seems like a boost in convenience to me.
my guess is you have no where near the amount of cards that the ppl on the forum has lol
YMMV but I recall trying to use Google Pay with Chase Freedom to pay for $500ish purchase at a grocery store and Chase would not let the transaction through. Ended up using the physical card (same card as the one attached to GP) and the purchase went through ok.
This happens to me ALL THE TIME for GC purchases. I can literally try the contactless method (Google Wallet), have it declined, then immediately just insert the chip into the machine and it’ll go through like normal. No fraud alerts or anything, it just doesn’t like contactless for whatever reason.
For me it was definitely the purchase amount, everything would work fine for smaller purchases afterwards without having to clear any alerts. Just sharing for those planning on doing four-five figure purchases at Simon mall with mobile wallets.