Samsung Pay has now enabled support for loyalty and rewards cards. And it isn’t just with select merchants; the company says that any such card can be uploaded into the app.

In a statement announcing the new feature, Samsung suggested that loyalty and membership cards could be uploaded to the platform, and used at the merchant’s POS simply by scanning the user’s smartphone screen with a regular barcode scanner. But as BetaNews‘ Brian Fagioli points out, the feature amounts to little more than snapping a picture of a loyalty card and then presenting that picture at a retailer’s cash register. In theory, the system should work with any merchant, but it remains to be seen how widely effective the system will be in practice.

The move is evidently a bid to keep up with pseudo-rival Apple Pay as that mPayment platform continues to integrate rewards cards in active collaboration with retailers. Ultimately, both platforms—not to mention Android Pay and any other emerging mPayment platforms—will want to incorporate as many merchant cards as they can, and if Samsung Pay’s somewhat low-tech solution turns out to be a success, it’s quite possible that others will ultimately emulate it.

Source: BetaNews