Gone are the days of fishing through your pockets for loose change and bills to pay your portion of the restaurant bill, taxi fare, or shared gift. With a few quick taps, mobile payment apps allow you to send a couple of bucks (or much more) to cover shared expenses and pay for products. I've tested five leading digital payment methods: PayPal, Apple Cash, Venmo, Facebook Pay, and Square Cash. How did these heavyweights stack up? To cover this, we'll dive into which payment methods are the most trusted and secure, how much the transfer fees are costing you, and who shares your personal information with third-party data collectors.
PAYPAL
With more than 425 million users, PayPal dominates the digital payment scene and is the most versatile payment system. It is the fifth-most accepted form of payment following American Express, Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. With PayPal, you can make payments from your computer browser, transfer money using your PayPal mobile app, and use it as a secure payment method for in-person and online shopping.
With buyer protection, encrypted transactions, and a host of additional security features, PayPal is one of the most trusted intermediaries for secure payments. If you can make an online purchase with PayPal, I recommend doing so to avoid entering your credit or debit card. While sending money via a linked bank account is free, PayPal does charge a domestic fee of 2.9 percent of your transfer amount for a debit or credit card, plus a $0.30 fixed fee per transaction. So, if you use PayPal, link a bank account to avoid the associated costs.
VENMO
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Esta historia es de la edición Summer 2022 de iPhone Life Magazine.
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LOCK YOUR APPLE ID WITH A PHYSICAL KEY
Security keys are physical items that can be used to verify your identity when logging into your Apple ID. If you are planning to use security keys, make sure you have at least two. Apple requires you use two, so that if you lose one, you will have another as a backup. At iPhone Life, a brand we recommend is the Yubico Yubikey 5Ci ($75).
IT'S TIME TO USE YOUR APPLE WALLET!
Apple Wallet lets you virtually store your credit and debit cards, rewards cards, boarding passes, movie tickets, and more all in one secure place.
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Color me a virtual-reality optimist. Alongside writing for iPhone Life, I’m a video game developer, 3D artist, and sci-fi author. I own a Meta Quest 3 and use it all the time to play games and view 3D models as I work.