Originally Posted by
NateEaton
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.
Doesn't make sense here. Why would the merchant need to recognize the reward partner? That would be like every mom and pop shop out there need to have the facility to update AA that you made a purchase with them.
Really, all the merchant needs to do is ensure their business is in the right merchant category (service, gas station, food, etc...). One additional registration requirement for co-branded merchant is to have the names/business entities that are supposed to get the extra points registered within Citi's system properly.