Ever left home without your wallet and felt lost? Well, things are starting to change and leaving your wallet at home on purpose could become a daily habit. What if your future travels, both home and abroad meant you don’t have to bring your wallet everywhere?
Payment apps
You can load a credit card or debit card onto an app like Apple Pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay and as long as the merchant accepts contactless payments (look for the contactless payment symbol displayed near the register), you just hold up your phone to the payment terminal to initiate the transaction.
Each app has additional security features to ensure a thief can’t steal your phone and start shopping. For example, Apple Pay requires TouchID (a fingerprint scan on your phone’s home button), FaceID or a PIN to complete the payment. If you lose your phone you can remotely wipe your payment details.
Hotel check-in
Hotels typically ask for identification at check-in. It’s a reasonable security measure, but it’s not ideal when your wallet is left at home. If you are staying with Hyatt, which is one of the growing number of hotels that provide an emailed security code for check-in. The great news is that you can now use your smartphone as your hotel room key. You can simply open the app, hold your phone to the digital lock and enter your room.
But in summary, it’s not all straightforward. Not every merchant accepts digital payments. If the restaurant accepts digital payments, the waiter may bring a card reader to you (which is common in Europe). But occasionally, the card reader can’t be moved from behind the bar, which means you have to follow the waiter to the bar and hand over your phone.
So things have come along way since the first contactless payment is 2007! Do you use contactless on your phone? Maybe cash will become a thing of the past in this forever changing digital world.
