So I was sitting at the gym today and decided to log into Chase pay to see if there are any useful merchants or offers and the answer is not really and I have an offer for $8 off my next order at five guys, and with their prices that's enough for a free burger.

I just see no real point to Chase Pay and don't see why I or anybody else would use it absent promotions like merchant sponsored discounts or UR earning multiples.

Eh, it might be useful for when you forget your card and need gas and there's a Shell nearby. Then again, NFC also works inside now.

Obviously, Chase wants to be in the space of digital payments. It can be big money for them. There are a lot of people who would rather use those than the credit cards (me included, there's no way I can carry all of my cards). They obviously need to put more work into the program too. It baffles my mind that they had these bonus point offers for using it, with only a handful of merchants ready. Were they expecting people to be like "Wow, this is really convenient if I ever need to buy anything at Walmart.com?"

I expect with time, it will be a major player. I wouldn't doubt if it returns to Freedom bonus categories. I'm also hoping it will permanently offer UR points as an incentive for using it.

If anyone reads up on the history of BankAmericard, it absolutely can be big business. There is no reason why Chase can't take over volume rather than partner with other networks. It is not just on the consumer side, but they are a massive player in the merchant business (which I think is how it got the fuel and restaurant deals). Split a bit of those savings with the merchant and Wal-Mart will marry the bank tomorrow.

However, the Visa deal pretty much ended that ROI aspect on costs/savings. Visa knew the threat and knew it needed to not let Chase get too excited about its own branded digital wallets (or actually its processing network). To the point that Visa doesn't even have to stop Chase's plan, worry about Chase bypassing Visa for transactions (which is legal/allowed) or put any whiff of anti-trust type of favoritism rules in place. For Chase to offer its own branded payment method will require so much investment and it isn't clear what advantage Chase can get (data analysis/targeting/profiling) that others can't also do.

We see this as well with the Freedom and Sapphire experiments. To have Chase partner with Paypal and Samsung Pay on promotions really doesn't help either. Chase didn't even get something figured out with one of its marquee merchant customers, Disney which has rolled out NFC in all the US parks (no QR code reader though).

I can see after CSR and 5/24, Chase is pretty disciplined in its promotions, so $10 via Samsung Pay (with a hard number of customers limit!) or $75 via PayPal or $8/$10 free food via Chase Pay is not going to cause some sort of heavy cost to be checked.

As noted, all of your Chase cards get auto-enrolled when you enter Chase Pay.