# Your experiences with mobile payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 10, 2019, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570 "2019-10-10T02:26:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2019, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/21 "2019-10-10T23:11:27Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > I use Google Pay frequently, and have found it faster than a chip card. I have to remember one location that won’t give cash back on Google pay, but that is the only hiccup. Are contactless cards not very common over there? ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/22 "2019-10-11T00:10:38Z")
I recently started using Google Pay from time to time. Because I’m not used to it, it does take more time than just using a credit card (sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts or holding the thing in a specific way) - so I don’t use it when there’s a line behind me or I’m in a hurry. The benefits are that it’s kind of cool and futuristic feeling. And the receipt is unloseable. The drawbacks are that Google knows even more about me than it already does. Also, because my ID isn’t on my phone, I have to carry around a wallet anyway, so it doesn’t save anything there. And again - it takes longer than using a credit card. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/23 "2019-10-11T00:32:55Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > I’ll also add that the watches suck unless you use them multiple times in a day/without talking the watch off because the first time you use it you need to enter your PIN. The authentication is that you need to enter your PIN at least every 24 hrs/after taking it off (which it knows by HR being lost from the sensor on the back of the watch). I don’t run across that issue. I mean, yeah, I tend to fuck with my watch several times a day (changing playlists, starting exercise, looking at texts), but I have my watch set to unlock when my phone unlocks so in practice, I almost never enter my pin. I use Apple Pay whenever possible as waving my watch over the payment device is about the easiest thing ever. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/24 "2019-10-11T00:34:59Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Are contactless cards not very common over there? In the US? No. Very uncommon in my experience. I’ve never had a debit or credit card issued with that functionality. ---
**Author:** ![galen\_ubal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galen_ubal/32/4440_2.png) [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/25 "2019-10-11T00:37:31Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Are contactless cards not very common over there? I was in the States at the beginning of the year, and contactless terminals are pretty rare - it seemed that only the fast food places would dependably have them. In Australia, they’re everywhere. I’ll use my phone, fitbit, whatever at just about every business I patronize. I suppose there may be a few places, farmers’ markets and the like, that don’t, but they have (probably) always been cash only anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/26 "2019-10-11T01:17:25Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > This was similar to my experience with Apple Pay on my iPhone. I don’t know if it is user error or what but sometimes at the point-of-sale I can get the phone to go into Apple Pay mode and sometimes I cannot. And that last part, sometimes I cannot, is exactly what has hurt adoption of most alternative payment systems like this. Cash or swipe/dip a card works, every time\*. A service like Apple Pay must be easier to use than a swipe/dip and it must be dependable - every time. I also do not want to be the fuckhead holding up the line so I reach for my card every time and swipe/dip instead of taking the risk that for this transaction Apple Pay might or might not work for me. > > \*Yes, I know a EMV chip or mag stripe can get damaged and the swipe/dip may fail. But frankly, that happens to me once every few years and that’s when I know it is time to ask my bank to send me a replacement card. It is less than 50% that my iPhone behaves properly and let’s me get to the Apple Pay screen where I can use the phone to pay. You just double click the Home button for TouchID phones, or double click the side button on the FaceID phones. It really can’t be much simpler. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/27 "2019-10-11T01:47:31Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Are contactless cards not very common over there? In the USA, nope. I’m pretty lucky that I’m in a pretty advantaged part of the USA, but I think tipping culture is preventing their wide spread adoption. You can use contactless in a lot of stores and for fast food, but any place that might want a tip is still take the card away and swipe like it’s 1992. Even when we got chip cards around 2016, they’re chip and sign, not chip and pin. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/28 "2019-10-11T07:08:05Z")
For me in Southern Ontario, it’s tap with my contactless EMV chip card almost every time. I do not have an Apple Watch or an iPhone that can use one. (My friends were after me to get an Apple Watch when my tax refund came in, but I priced a Watch and the new iPhone I would have had to get to use it, and it came to near 2000 dollars, which is well into “new computer” territory.) I have an Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy A5, a decent phone that came with my account. It has NFC and I can use the wallet app from my bank to make payments, but that involves so many extra steps, that I’ve only used it once. With my cards, it’s “pull card out, tap on reader, see payment approved before I can get the card back in my wallet”. PS: for tips, as on a restaurant, you approve the amount, select the amount of tip, hit okay, _then_ when the terminal displays the contactless symbol, tap. This is either at the counter or on the machine they bring to the table. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/29 "2019-10-11T12:04:39Z")
I have an Apple MasterCard, and have it set up to allow ApplePay, but I haven’t yet been somewhere that accepts it. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/30 "2019-10-11T12:15:35Z")
I’ve had android pay set up on my phone for NFC use for a couple of years and I pretty much use it exclusively and hardly ever carry cash. I’ve used it all around Europe and on the tube etc. I don’t recall it ever not working or having any rogue or missed payments. Much prefer it. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/31 "2019-10-11T12:33:54Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > You just double click the Home button for TouchID phones, or double click the side button on the FaceID phones. It really can’t be much simpler. Yes, I know. Trust me, I’ve watched others do it effortlessly and been very annoyed at them. Haha! I have owned iPhones exclusively since the very first one. Half the time, the double click on the Home button brings up the Apple Pay screen and messaging to hold it close to the reader. The other half of the time, not so much. And the double click only seems to work if the iPhone is locked. If I’m standing in line, I’m probably gazing at an app on my phone while I wait and my phone isn’t locked. Double-click doesn’t work from there, you have to lock the phone then double click. Or when unlocked, open Wallet, select debit card, wait an indeterminate amount of seconds before it changes from showing last transactions to going into Apple Pay mode. Like I said, it has to be simpler than swipe/dip a card and as reliable. It is not -for me- and as a result, I’ve stopped trying to use it. I am getting my first Apple Watch today and I am curious to see if it is any easier to use Apple Pay that way. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/32 "2019-10-11T16:33:01Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > Are contactless cards not very common over there? I have one credit card like that, but I use my ATM card for most daily purchases, and it’s a chip & pin card. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/33 "2019-10-11T16:57:01Z")
I use Google Pay when I can. However, most of the self-serve kiosks I’ve tried will prompt for a human store attendant to come complete the transaction which ends up killing the convenience factor. Why they do this for a phone, and not for a card, I don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/34 "2019-10-11T18:26:42Z")
I use Apple Pay when available. It works for me the vast majority of times when the vendor’s hardware claims to accept it. I can only think of one time it didn’t work, so probably a 99+% success rate. It’s easier and faster to get my phone out of my pocket than take my wallet out and then my credit card and then wait, etc. > [@MeanJoe](#): > > Half the time, the double click on the Home button brings up the Apple Pay screen and messaging to hold it close to the reader. The other half of the time, not so much. And the double click only seems to work if the iPhone is locked. I do this accidentally sometimes, but I’ve never needed to do it when actually paying for something. The pay screen always just comes up when I hold it near the reader. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/35 "2019-10-11T18:49:50Z")
I use Google Pay occasionally, but at all the places where Google Pay works, I can also just use contactless payment directly with my credit card, so I tend to do that. The problem is that, at least around me, almost every chip & sign machine has the logo to take contactless payment, but they are frequently not setup for it. So I’ll try my card on the contactless pad, and then when it doesn’t work I can shove it into the chip slot. If I was using my phone, I’d have to swap payment methods, etc. Samsung pay was interesting, because my old phone, an S8, had some sort of magnetic field generator that was able to do contactless payments to a credit card swipe machine. That meant it worked nearly anywhere that took credit cards. If NFC didn’t work, then it would try the magnetic thing. The problem was that it would often take two or three tries for the payment to go through. Then Samsung started flooding their pay app with ads, and cut the value of their reward points by 100, so once the novelty factor wore off, I stopped using it. ---
**Author:** ![RickG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rickg/32/5174_2.png) [@RickG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickG)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/36 "2019-10-11T22:33:45Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > Yes, I know. Trust me, I’ve watched others do it effortlessly and been very annoyed at them. Haha! > > I have owned iPhones exclusively since the very first one. Half the time, the double click on the Home button brings up the Apple Pay screen and messaging to hold it close to the reader. The other half of the time, not so much. And the double click only seems to work if the iPhone is locked. If I’m standing in line, I’m probably gazing at an app on my phone while I wait and my phone isn’t locked. Double-click doesn’t work from there, you have to lock the phone then double click. Or when unlocked, open Wallet, select debit card, wait an indeterminate amount of seconds before it changes from showing last transactions to going into Apple Pay mode. > > Like I said, it has to be simpler than swipe/dip a card and as reliable. It is not -for me- and as a result, I’ve stopped trying to use it. > > I am getting my first Apple Watch today and I am curious to see if it is any easier to use Apple Pay that way. 😃 Interesting. I started using Apple Pay with the 6S (TouchID based). I never had to click to bring up the payment screen. As soon as I moved the phone close to the point-of-sale terminal, it would pop up automagically and just touching the home button to authenticate was sufficient; no clicking necessary. Did they change the UI on the TouchID phones in a later iOS release? Now I have a 10 (FaceID based), but I never use it for payment–I use the Apple Watch, which is straightforward (double-click and touch to the POS). Also, the watch works even if the phone isn’t present. I am (mostly) blind, and using contactless payment is a great accessibility feature. I don’t have to figure out where to insert the card, just get the watch near enough to the reader. I do get annoyed when I have to _also_ push buttons on the screen or add a tip or sign, but I can usually get the clerk to walk me through that. When we were in the UK in June, virtually every place, even small vendors in market halls, took contactless without a glitch. Availability in Italy wasn’t quite as good, but we could at least buy train tickets at self-service kiosks without risking a credit card skimmer. Adoption by merchants seems to be slowly getting better in the US, especially in the big cities. The newer the business, the more likely they take contactless, since the capability seems to be standard in new POS systems. ---
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2019, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/37 "2019-10-11T23:59:44Z")
> [@RickG](#): > > I am (mostly) blind, and using contactless payment is a great accessibility feature. I don’t have to figure out where to insert the card, just get the watch near enough to the reader. I’m the opposite - I’ve got neurological issues that make double clicking with my right forefinger on my Apple Watch a frustrating thing, so I prefer to use my phone. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/38 "2019-10-12T06:02:57Z")
> [@RickG](#): > > Interesting. I started using Apple Pay with the 6S (TouchID based). I never had to click to bring up the payment screen. As soon as I moved the phone close to the point-of-sale terminal, it would pop up automagically and just touching the home button to authenticate was sufficient; no clicking necessary. Did they change the UI on the TouchID phones in a later iOS release? Now I have a 10 (FaceID based), but I never use it for payment–I use the Apple Watch, which is straightforward (double-click and touch to the POS). Also, the watch works even if the phone isn’t present. iPhones with Face ID do the double click thing since there is no Touch ID. So you’d be double clicking your X if you didn’t use the Watch. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2019, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570/39 "2019-10-12T14:58:29Z")
Just don’t let your phone battery die or you’ll wind up a [criminal](https://www.zdnet.com/article/her-iphone-died-it-led-to-her-being-charged-as-a-criminal/). (This is a problem with people and tech. They all too often that stuff works all the time.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-experiences-with-mobile-payments-apple-pay-google-pay-etc/841570.md?page=1)