The Ease of Payments via Smartphone

Ever seen someone put their smartphone on the card swipe machine? It looks funny, but it’s faster than figuring out if you need to swipe or insert your credit card. With the ease of smartphone payments, you may want to consider taking a few seconds to set it up and try it out. Also, because it’s 2019, I firmly believe everyone has a smartphone at this point. But if you’re rocking a flip-phone, kudos to you. For everyone else, your smartphone may either be an iPhone or an Android, so for this post, I’ll be talking about Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay.

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash

When I come up to the cashier and I have a strong belief they’ll accept smartphone payments, I’ll ask if they take Apple Pay. Funny thing is, I primarily use Samsung Pay. Well, I know for a fact that people will always recognize Apple products, but it’s also because Apple uses an NFC antenna to submit payments. Almost all smartphones after 2017 have some sort of NFC antenna so you can always check to see if a place accepts smartphone payments by asking if they accept Apple Pay. Also, Square card readers as of 2019 seem to not accept Apple Pay but do accept Samsung and Google Pay.

I merely want to tell you about the ease of making payments with your smartphones, since it can be intimidating at first. If you’re concerned about security, know that all three services offer a special type of encryption when using your credit card. When you enter your card info, the pay app creates a device-unique card number to use during payments, hiding your actual card information and essentially keeping your card information safe.

As for availability, Samsung makes their phones capable of magnetic secure transmission (MST) payments, making it available anywhere you can swipe a card. Apple Pay is the most popular form of payment, meaning most places will accept it, and if not, you can always look for the wireless contact symbol that looks like a card inside of a sideways wireless signal. And, anywhere Apple Pay is accepted, you can count on Google Pay being accepted as well.

Set-up is easy and you can get started immediately. Google Pay seems to be the easiest to set-up and most straightforward of the three options, and widely available, as opposed to Samsung Pay and Apple Pay. Scan your card during set-up, and watch as your app makes a new card number for your security start tapping those pay machines instead of figuring out if you need to swipe or insert your card!

Bonus bit: Samsung pay is the only one offering points for every purchase, as well as cash back deals when shop through the app. If you have a Samsung smartphone, I highly recommend using this as your payment option.