Apple Pay a No Go with the Amazon Visa Rewards Card

I have one of these cards. When I went to add my other cards to Apple Pay yesterday, I was surprised to see that it wasn't automatically added as my default Apple Pay card because it's my main iTunes account card (which is supposed to be what happens).

Puzzled, I tried manually adding it. Nope, unsupported.

So then I activated my Capital One card, which went perfectly fine. Then tried my Simple.com debit card, which failed, but I know they're working on compatibility. My Fidelity account card I never expected to work, but tried anyway.

So then, still curious about what was going on, I called Chase directly and spoke to someone about it.

She really did seem to be confused, initially, about why the Amazon card wasn't supported. She acknowledged that some of their cards weren't supported right now and was about to make that her official statement on the matter, but then after a minute or two she seemed to either look something up on their internal computer systems, pull out some paperwork about it, or silently gesture to someone in the vicinity (manager? who knows), and then told me that the Amazon card would be working with Apple Pay in the near future. What information she based that on, I can't say, but that was the clear indication.

Given that Chase is obviously ok with customers using Apple Pay (they likely see it as being in their favor for us to use Apple Pay due to lower risk of fraud related to merchant leaks. Target. Home Depot. Enough said), I imagine they would like me to use this Chase Amazon card with Apple Pay too, particularly since I use it a lot everywhere.

I expect this issue is likely some boring detail that hadn't been worked out by the time Apple Pay went live, rather than a political issue over Kindle books or hypothetical competition from a mobile Amazon Payment service tied to Fire phones.

And I doubt Amazon has all that much say in what Chase does with customer accounts that they consider "theirs" anyway. For all intents and purposes, this is a Chase credit account and a Chase card, not an Amazon card (Amazon Store cards exist, but this certainly isn't one of them).

Chase is the one extending the credit line, Chase is the one who assessed my risk and ability to pay before setting the terms on the account, I can visit a local Chase branch to talk to them about it, I pay it off by visiting chase.com or using the official Chase mobile app, and were I to default, it would be Chase suing me. The only indication that Amazon is even involved is their logo on the front of what is otherwise VERY obviously a Chase branded card, and that the rewards for the card are applied as credit toward Amazon purchases.

We'll see what happens, but a week from now, a month at the latest, I expect it'll work. And if it doesn't and Amazon really is screwing with this card's Apple Pay compatibility, the only effect it'll have is to make me favor other cards instead, and only use this one to pay for Netflix every month just to keep it in use.

It could have nothing to do with Amazon being petty. A coworker was complaining of the same thing, only the Chase card that isn't supported was some airline-branded card. The rest of his Chase cards are supported.