I’ve had Samsung phones off and on since they started offering android models. They are great phones overall but lately their Pay platform has caused problems. It’s a first world problem, but when you work in tech, the little things like a bad user experience annoy you.
The Phone
I purchased my current GalaxyS8+ almost 2 years ago; purchased after my last phone gave me the green screen of death and wouldn’t reboot. Until recently, I’ve been extremely pleased with the phone and it’s features.
The model I have has curved sides and a super thin profile. The phone is just big enough so it feels large. I don’t have to stretch my fingers much, like with some other phones. I can use phone one handed which is a problem on some large format phones.
Samsung Pay Problems
Almost 2 years of bliss using Samsung Pay with a trickle of minor annoyances. It started with the points. After collecting a ton of points, I found that I could no longer exchange them for digital gift cards. That wasn’t a huge deal, but a minor, seemingly unannounced change. I saved up points to cash in but couldn’t buy a card with them, only Samsung goods.
Next time something goes afoul, I am at the grocery store. I opened the Samsung Pay app to pay for my things and I am bombarded with a new End User License Agreement (EULA) plus a new terms and conditions page. I am then forced to scroll through all of the pages and accept before I can use the app to pay for something again. At the store, I pulled out my real wallet out and paid with a real card, then accepted all the legal spaghetti when I got home. I’ve worked on mobile apps and it is possible to push a notification to users when you want them to interact with your software. Push notifications don’t always work to get people to do what you want, but at least try it for something like a EULA update. I get push notifications with other advertisements from Samsung.
The latest bit of pixels that got my hackles up is a full page overlay advertisement for the latest Galaxy phone and a deal for headphones. The app worked in the background so I could close out the advertisement without interrupting my purchase. Not sure why it was in the Pay app, except that you can buy headphones in the app with your points.
The Pluses
I do have some good things to say about the Samsung Pay features. It allowed me to separate payments from my Google account, which is a huge deal. Google Wallet and Android Pay aren’t always the easiest to use, They have similar problems to Apple pay, in that not everyone has the ability to do tap to pay.
Samsung Pay is really easy to use. The phones have a magnetic stripe feature that mimics swiping a real card within the phone itself. The number used is encrypted so, if someone stole card the number from the transaction, that same number can’t be used again. My original annoyance was that people kept telling me their card machines didn’t do Apple Pay. Kind of makes me think the Apple people are a hair douche-y about a store not taking their payment system.