Do you regularly use a digital wallet?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Do you still pull out your physical credit and/or debit card when paying for stuff at the store or do you use a digital wallet (GooglePay, ApplePay, SamsungPay, PayPal, etc) and use contactless payment methods? Even individual stores like Walmart have their own digital wallets (Walmart Pay) to pay at their particular store.

I've used them in the past here and there, but when I was trying them out, it was more fail than success. Either the payment terminal wouldn't connect or there was some other issue that caused me to have to break out the physical debit card, but that was years ago. Just added my debit card to GooglePay yesterday and am thinking about giving it a try again.

[DemonGeminiX]

I just use my credit card. Or cash, preferably. I haven't bothered with the digital wallets. I suppose when it's absolutely necessary, I'll figure it out, but no one in my small town has given up physical cash, checks, or credit cards yet.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I just use my credit card. Or cash, preferably. I haven't bothered with the digital wallets. I suppose when it's absolutely necessary, I'll figure it out, but no one in my small town has given up physical cash, checks, or credit cards yet.

I've actually found cash harder and harder to use, especially at self checkouts. There have been multiple times over the last month or so where multiple Walmarts has had all their self checkouts set to card only because they have had a lack of cash/coins to stock the machines to be able to give out change.

[DemonGeminiX]

I've actually found cash harder and harder to use, especially at self checkouts. There have been multiple times over the last month or so where multiple Walmarts has had all their self checkouts set to card only because they have had a lack of cash/coins to stock the machines to be able to give out change.

So they're getting robbed a lot and were proactive about it?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

So they're getting robbed a lot and were proactive about it?

Cash shortage I guess. There are several stores with signs saying if you are going to pay in cash to please use exact change because they don't always have enough cash/coin to make change.

[Godfather]

I use tap to pay for 95% of my purchases on Visa, and of probably 50/50 split between tap on my phone or just tapping my actual credit card. No rhyme or reason to why, both work for me. The only time I insert and use the chip is for larger purchases when it's required, or when I want to use my Amex because tap seems to rarely work on Amex.


What always strikes me as odd is in when I visit the US, a lot of restaurants don't bring around mobile machines to just pay at the table still. I get really weirded out when some kid takes my credit card, walks away and bring me back a physical receipt to fill out the tip by hand. Haven't seen that at a restaurant up here in years and I hate having my credit card taken out of sight.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I use tap to pay for 95% of my purchases on Visa, and of probably 50/50 split between tap on my phone or just tapping my actual credit card. No rhyme or reason to why, both work for me. The only time I insert and use the chip is for larger purchases when it's required, or when I want to use my Amex because tap seems to rarely work on Amex.


What always strikes me as odd is in when I visit the US, a lot of restaurants don't bring around mobile machines to just pay at the table still. I get really weirded out when some kid takes my credit card, walks away and bring me back a physical receipt to fill out the tip by hand. Haven't seen that at a restaurant up here in years and I hate having my credit card taken out of sight.

Which digital wallet do you use?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Ya fair enough, it's always just struck me as odd that the US has the cutting edge of everything over Canada, except it seems with point of sale technology. Even tiny restaurants and stores here have mobile payment machines that accept tap and chip.

I remember only a few years back, and American asked me if we had debit/Interac cards yet. I'm thinking, interac? I've had one since I was a kid, probably 25 years!

Not hating, just a funny difference you notice when traveling.

Which digital wallet do you use?

[deebakes]

guess i don't even think about it because that is the standard here gf, my credit card takes small walks away frequently (or at least used to) . when traveling internationally, i have noticed that they always bring the machine to the table (and card) not vice versa.

[Godfather]

guess i don't even think about it because that is the standard here gf, my credit card takes small walks away frequently (or at least used to) . when traveling internationally, i have noticed that they always bring the machine to the table (and card) not vice versa.

Ya fair enough, it's always just struck me as odd that the US has the cutting edge of everything over Canada, except it seems with point of sale technology. Even tiny restaurants and stores here have mobile payment machines that accept tap and chip.

I remember only a few years back, and American asked me if we had debit/Interac cards yet. I'm thinking, interac? I've had one since I was a kid, probably 25 years!

Not hating, just a funny difference you notice when traveling.

[Pony]

Ya fair enough, it's always just struck me as odd that the US has the cutting edge of everything over Canada, except it seems with point of sale technology. Even tiny restaurants and stores here have mobile payment machines that accept tap and chip.

I remember only a few years back, and American asked me if we had debit/Interac cards yet. I'm thinking, interac? I've had one since I was a kid, probably 25 years!

Not hating, just a funny difference you notice when traveling.

Yup, probably 90% take a stroll with your card here. Many of the new big chains do POS. Don't know what the cost is for those or if we're just resistant to change?

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Yup, probably 90% take a stroll with your card here. Many of the new big chains do POS. Don't know what the cost is for those or if we're just resistant to change?

I think a lot of it is cost, especially for smaller mom & pop type businesses. We take credit cards here and the cost of getting a POS machine was ridiculous, especially considering the small amount of cards that we do take on a monthly basis (most are all NET30 open accounts).

As for bigger companies, maybe it's still cost too because I'm not sure how the newer POS machines that allow contactless will integrate with their existing systems and it may mean that they need to overhaul their entire systems. That's just me guessing though as I do see a lot more businesses that have the contactless POS systems. Oddly enough though, at least here, Walmart doesn't seem to be contactless at their self-checkouts, but I will check for sure next time I'm in there. I remember back when I had Samsung Pay and was fooling around with using it as a digital wallet several years ago, it was a MAJOR pain in the ass to use at Walmart. You needed to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it to work. But that may have changed now.

[Noilly Pratt]

Ya fair enough, it's always just struck me as odd that the US has the cutting edge of everything over Canada, except it seems with point of sale technology. Even tiny restaurants and stores here have mobile payment machines that accept tap and chip.

I remember only a few years back, and American asked me if we had debit/Interac cards yet. I'm thinking, interac? I've had one since I was a kid, probably 25 years!

Not hating, just a funny difference you notice when traveling.

I have installed some Point Of Sale stuff and from what I understand Canada was one of the first test-beds for this. We got Debit cards long before most other places. I had a debit card in 1984 and my US and UK cousins were blown away by this.

But I think we are lagging behind with the digital wallet concept. I know my watch has Samsung Pay but I won't be able to use it most places yet because they haven't set it all up in Canada yet.

[Godfather]

I have installed some Point Of Sale stuff and from what I understand Canada was one of the first test-beds for this. We got Debit cards long before most other places. I had a debit card in 1984 and my US and UK cousins were blown away by this.

But I think we are lagging behind with the digital wallet concept. I know my watch has Samsung Pay but I won't be able to use it most places yet because they haven't set it all up in Canada yet.

That's interesting. I would think it might help that our banking is largely handled by 3-4 major carriers nationally which probably makes things easier to streamline, as well as Interac is a Canadian company too eh?

[lost in melb.]

Ya fair enough, it's always just struck me as odd that the US has the cutting edge of everything over Canada, except it seems with point of sale technology. Even tiny restaurants and stores here have mobile payment machines that accept tap and chip.

I remember only a few years back, and American asked me if we had debit/Interac cards yet. I'm thinking, interac? I've had one since I was a kid, probably 25 years!

Not hating, just a funny difference you notice when traveling.

It's bizarre. I was just having a conversation yesterday I went to use Google pay and it didn't work. Apparently the program Samsung uses detects both the tap and the swipe mechanism. The guy said this is because they still swipe in America.

Still yet to find out why they don't tap much in the US.