Originally Posted by
deeruck
Why does AA need to approve a Citi card being used in Android Pay? AA doesn't "issue" the card. Was a reason given for that?
To add a data point, I've also not been able to add my card. My understanding of the situation is that "unsupported" cards are grandfathered in. But because Citi is a participanting bank, the card is not considered to be "unsupported" in the setup process, which you can see from the customized Citi terms and conditions. I'm not sure if its intentional or not, but that's what happens.
I suspect it has to do with the AA cards being a rewards program product - most rewards program credit cards involve some level of POS integration, for example having your AA member number recognized at POS when paying for a ticket at airport ticket counter. With regular credit cards, the POS device may need to use the card number to link to the member number but that requires jumping through some extra hoops with things like Apple Pay and Android Pay since the merchant doesn't see the "real" card number but instead a substitute token. In other words, may not be that American has to "approve" it but that they won't allow Citi to link your AA card to Android Pay until the AA systems are ready to support it.
Given that Android Pay is leveraging some of the same back-end capabilities the card companies put in place for Apple Pay, it seems like the fact that Citi and AA *do* support linking your card to Apple Pay that Android Pay would also be supported but I have an idea that there are still some differences, ones that American hasn't coded for yet. Hopefully, that'll change soon.