Apple Pay

For over a decade, millions of people have turned to Apple when they want to buy music, movies, and apps. With Apple Pay, they can buy nearly any product simply by holding an iPhone over an NFC terminal at the store. The mobile payment app now even lets you pay other people and maintain funds using its Apple Cash feature. The latest addition is the innovative, high-reward Apple Card credit card. Apple Pay has proven the most successful foray into the new world of cash-free, card-free shopping. And in these days of COVID-19, contactless payment systems are more advisable than ever. But is Apple Pay the easiest-to-use and most widely available option?

How to Set Up Apple Pay

If you have an iPhone 6 or later, you already have Apple Pay. It's baked into iOS as part of the Wallet app. To use Apple Pay, you also need to set up a passcode, Touch ID, or FaceID (if you're on an iPhone X or later). Adding a new card is a snap. Just take a picture of the front of the card and enter the remaining security details. If you already have a card associated with your iTunes or iCloud account, Apple Pay can just draw from that.

Touch ID and FaceID comprise a strong first layer of security, but you can never be too safe when it comes to your money. So Apple Pay takes things one step further by obscuring your real card data with anonymized digital tokens. When you make purchases, this anonymous data is the only information retailers receive.

Other services like Google Pay and Samsung Pay use a similar fake-number system. In fact, your financial service sends a Device Account Number that's stored on the device in a special chip called a Secure Element. All this makes Apple Pay a secure payment choice, and even more secure than a plastic card.

Using Apple Pay

As mentioned, a lot of stores now support Apple Pay, including American Eagle, Gap, GameStop, Walgreens, and even White Castle. Some display it loud and proud with an Apple graphic in the front window or near the register, but often you'll just see the EMV Contactless Symbol (the one that looks like a Wi-Fi symbol).

I paid for my evening groceries at the local supermarket with my iPhone X, which requires double-tapping the side button and showing the phone your face. These days, uncovering your face in public is not advisable, but luckily there's an alternative of entering your phone PIN to complete the payment. Double-tapping the button also pulls up Apple Pay by default, but you can turn that option off.

When a payment goes through, you feel a satisfying haptic clunk. It's quick, simple, and painless, but it's a toss-up as to whether Google Pay's system of working whenever the phone is unlocked is easier (you can protect that service with a separate PIN). You don't even need to unlock the phone. The Apple Pay app lists all your transactions for later review. I also got an email from my bank making sure I was the one who set up Apple Pay with my card.

Competitor Samsung Pay has a clever strategy that makes it usable even at stores without NFC systems: Use embedded magnetic circuitry to mimic a credit or debit card. That way the app can communicate with any standard card reader. Granted, Samsung Pay only works on recent Samsung phones, and its security isn't as beefy as Apple's. Google Pay is restricted to the same limited number of NFC-equipped stores as Apple Pay, though most points of sale have updated to the newer system by this point.

For more details on the ins and outs of Apple's system, you can read our piece on how to set up and use Apple Pay.

Apple Card

In a joint effort with Goldman Sachs and MasterCard, the Apple Card offers both innovations and exceptional perks when it comes to mobile credit and payment. Signing up for it is easier and faster than any other credit card I've applied to: You simply go into the Wallet app on your iPhone and answer a few questions. I could use the card for purchases later the same day!

The card offers 2 percent cash back on most charges, and 3 percent for purchases at the Apple Store and select other retailers (Walgreens and Panera, for example). The card charges no fees—no annual fee, no transaction fees (even for foreign transactions), and most surprisingly, no late fees! How do they do that? If you miss a payment, your interest rate goes up, though cards that charge late fees often do that as well. The interest rate for my card was considerably lower than a recent card I acquired from Citibank, too.

The one downside to the rewards is that they go into your Apple Cash account by default, rather than against your credit balance, though you can set it up to dump money there. One boon to the system is that, unlike typical bank reward plans, you get the money soon after the payment is charged, rather than once a month.

A fun, unique feature of the card is that it starts out as blank white, and as you use it for charges, it grows more colorful. You also get a notification on your phone for any activity on the account. It also shows a map of the store you paid at, and suggests an amount to pay that limits the amount of interest you'll spend. As with any credit card, though, paying it off every month is the best policy, saving you paying any interest. You're also protected by MasterCard's zero liability protection, the case with most credit cards these days.

You can order a physical card for stores that don't take Apple Pay (though you'll only get a 1 percent reward), and you can access a standard but "virtual" credit card number for online purchases. You can't access your Apple Card info from your account on the main Apple site, but you can go to card.apple.com to see your statements and so on.

Extra Features

The Apple Wallet app that incorporates Apple Pay has a few more uses. You can store information such as boarding passes, movie and game tickets, gift cards, and information about loyalty programs all in one spot. There's a link to a section of the App Store where you can browse for apps that take advantage of Apple Wallet, such as Fandango, Southwest Airlines, and Target. Some of these apps even allow for in-app purchases via Apple Pay. This kind of convenience adds to Apple Wallet's usefulness.

Apple Pay also works with Apple Watch. The wearable features NFC as well, so you can simply double-tap the side button and hold your wrist next to a payment terminal to make your purchase. The Apple Watch forces users to reenter a password if it senses it's no longer touching skin, so nearby thieves can't rip off your watch and use it for spending sprees.

Less applicable in this work-from-home era but still of interest to many is Apple's Express Transit Card option. This works by holding the phone or watch to an entry payment point, without needing to verify with face or touch. It works in New York, Washington D.C., and Portland Ore. If you skip the Express option and require a confirmation, Chicago joins those towns. It also works in eight other countries around the world.

Apple Cash

Getting in a bit late on Venmo's action, Apple Cash lets you pay friends and store money in a virtual debit card, rather than just using Apple Pay as a conduit for a credit or bank card.

A slider switch in the Wallet & Apple Pay section of Settings lets you enable Apple Cash. Once you slide this switch, you have to enter your Apple ID and password and accept a legal agreement stating that the services are provided through Green Dot Bank. The terms point out that Apple Cash comprises two services: a virtual payment card and the funds transfer service.

Apple Cash works with every Apple phone back to the iPhone 6, and on iPads starting with the Air 2 model. The service also works with all versions of the Apple Watch. Android and other non-Apple devices are not supported.

Note that you can send money only to other iOS users who have accepted the agreement, and you both need two-factor authentication set up for your Apple ID. Two-factor authentication provides additional security, but it's stricter than the other payment services' setup requirements. Setup also requires reentering your credit card digits.

After I completed these steps, I was asked to add a debit card so that money could be transferred to my new bank account. You don't have to do this to use the service, but the setup is more involved than it is with Venmo, though Facebook Payments is easier than either.

As with Facebook Messenger's Payments feature, you send money via the iPhone's Messages app. The option is in the app tray at the bottom of the Messages' screen. Just tap the A icon to open it. You then see a dollar amount that you can increase or decrease, and you can switch between paying and requesting. Venmo requires you to open its separate app to make payments. That's a plus for Facebook and Apple, in that you access payments from a messaging app you're probably using regularly already.

When I tapped Pay to send $1 to a colleague and then hit the Send up arrow, I had to approve the transaction with a Touch ID finger press (of course, iPhone X and later users need to use Face ID). You can use only a debit card or your Apple Cash balance to pay acquaintances. The chat entry says Pending until the recipient receives the funds.

Pay With Apple

You can tell Siri "Pay Tom five dollars," but that's also possible with Venmo and Square Cash. Apple Cash, thankfully, doesn't by default share your every transaction with a special-purpose social network, as Venmo does. With Venmo, unless you change privacy settings, any of your contacts can see who you paid in a feed of transactions. Some may like this, but it seems like an invasion of privacy to me. However, Venmo offers a couple of important advantages over Apple's system: You can scan a QR code to verify your payee, and you can attach notes along with a payment. Venmo also lets you pay amounts smaller than $1, Apple's minimum. Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo (which are available for iOS) add the ability to split payments among multiple recipients, and PayPal offers a Money Pool feature you can use for group gifts and the like.

If you receive money from a contact, it goes into your Apple Cash virtual cash card. You can use that balance either by dumping it back into a connected bank account or to pay for something else via Apple Pay or Apple Cash. Square Cash can send you a physical cash card that you can use in stores to spend the money received in your Square account.

Apple Cash, Venmo, and PayPal can all be used to shop at online retailers. PayPal (which also owns Venmo) may have the upper hand here, as the most ubiquitous internet payment service. The biggest advantage of Facebook Payments, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo however, is that they're platform-independent—with any of them, you can send money to anyone, regardless of the operating system they use. With all of those save Venmo, you can make and receive payments from a web browser—not so with Apple Cash (or Samsung Pay). If you're using Apple's system and want to pay an Android user, you're going to have to hand over dirty old cash.

Should You Pay the Apple Way?

NFC has reached a tipping point of availability, and in these times that favor contactless payments, that's a welcome development. Apple Pay is a well-implemented, secure option, and the addition of Cash and Card make it even more useful. The Apple Card adds innovation to the digital credit card field as well as offering a standard credit card or credit card number. Apple's service, however, is still limited to Apple devices, while Google Pay, our Editors Choice, works on all major device platforms.