DataGoodbye cash: apps for mobile payments

Ilaria Trapuzzano8 years ago9 min

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Bye bye wallet. In the future, we’ll only be paying via smartphone. Big tech companies like Google, Apple and PayPal have been investing millions of dollars in mobile payment projects. According to Gartner, a multinational consultancy firm, this phenomenon will see its peak in 2018, involving 50% of the US, Canada, Japan and Western European consumers. A market that, just in US, will make 86 billion dollars.

Even in Italy this phenomenon is expanding, generating in 2014 around 160 million euros, according to the Politecnico of Milano.

But what are the wallets that are changing the way we spend money? We selected some from the App Store and Google play.

Satispay

Satispay

Is the Italian app that allows you to transfer money to your contacts or to pay in stores immediately, as if you were sending a WhatsApp text. Satispay is like a pre-paid card that works thanks to a circuit connected to your phone number and to your IBAN. You define a budget per week, accredited automatically from your bank account. To pay, just select the contact and put the amount you want to transfer. The advantages? First of all, security. You bypass credit card and POS, and to subscribe to the service, users and merchants must give a proper ID when they subscribe, then the IBAN and social security number. Then the immediacy, the transfer happens in a few secs, and it is for free if it is less than 10 euros. Also, Satispay is becoming more and more popular among young people and you can use it in 4500 stores.

Venmo

Venmo is an app for social payment, that allows you to make small payments among privates (dinners, cinema, rent) everything with your smartphone. You can pay anyone that has a Venmo account using the money you put on the platform or by connecting to your bank account and/or credit card. You can share these moments on Facebook, reason included, and this attracts especially young users. The advantages are: safety, certified by PayPal that, in 2013 bought Venmo, then immediacy, thanks to the possibility of putting on your phone a certain amount of money from your bank account. And then, it’s free.

venmo

Another app developed by an Italian startup. The payment happens when you create a certified IBAN 2pay, that basically works with your phone number. Payments are made by inserting the phone number of who has to receive the payment and the security PIN number. If you want to keep your users hidden, you can create a QR code, that the merchant will read as a barcode. As the other services, 2 pay focuses on security: the IBAN is authorized and surveilled by Banca d’Italia and thanks to cryptography there’s a minimum chance of data theft and fraud. The plus? Respect of your privacy through the QR code

Apple pay

It works in an easy way: just place your Apple device (iPhone 6, iPad, Apple watch) close to a POS with NFC technology and pay with one of the credit card saved in your “Passbook”. The payment will be authorize by placing your finger on the Touch-Id of your iPhone. To fully understand the advantages of this payment we’ll have to wait… surely the possibility of paying simply with the phone or smart watch is the dream of many… Not only Apple’s users.

Ilaria Trapuzzano

“Il vero viaggio non consiste nel cercare nuove terre, ma nell’avere nuovi occhi” – M. Proust. Nata e cresciuta nel giornalismo televisivo, convertita al digitale per scelta inseguendo la voglia di sperimentare diverse forme di narrazione. Racconto la realtà attraverso una nuova prospettiva professionale e di vita, cercando ispirazione nelle cose universalmente belle: viaggi, cibo e buon vino.

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