Why Should I Use a Digital Wallet?

October 20, 2023

By K-Staff

Banking, Insighter, Security

You’re in line at the grocery store, doing some weekend shopping, or getting ready to fill up your gas tank – but you realize you forgot your credit card at home. You have your smartphone, of course – you never go anywhere without it – but that doesn’t do you much good when you need to pay the cashier… unless you have a digital wallet set up.

What is a digital wallet? It’s an application where you can store digital copies of your debit cards, credit cards (hello 1.5% cash back on the Kirtland CU VISA® card!), gift cards, and membership/loyalty cards to use without needing the physical cards on hand. If you have an Apple device or Android device, you may already be familiar with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay – these are all different variations of digital wallets.

To get started using a digital wallet, you’ll need to add your cards to your device. Apple, Google, and Samsung have detailed instructions for how to do this for each of their applications – click the links below to get started:

Once you’ve added cards to your wallet, you can use the application to make payments online or at retailers that accept digital transactions – but how do you know which retailers support digital transactions?

Look for the NFC symbol or logos for the digital wallet of your choice at the cashier’s station – in most cases today, if you can use a contactless (tap-to-pay) credit or debit card, you can use a digital wallet without issue.

Digital wallets offer incredible convenience for both online and in-person shopping – but they are also safer than using traditional cards. How? Digital wallets require your device password or biometric credentials to be unlocked, your digital copies are safe in hand – and when you do make a transaction with a digital wallet, it is encrypted and tokenized, meaning that none of your actual card or account numbers are stored in the digital wallet.

When encryption and tokenization are used together, your information is useless and unreadable to fraudsters – so even if a retailer you shopped at is hacked, your personal payment information will remain protected.

Digital wallets also allow you to easily send and receive money to people – some digital wallets like Venmo and Google Pay even offer ways to split bills. No more reaching for a calculator to tally up who owes what amongst friends!

Sources:

Your Digital Wallet (https://kirtlandcu.org/your-digital-wallet/)

What Is A Digital Wallet and How Does It Work? (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/what-is-a-digital-wallet-and-how-does-it-work)

Digital wallets: A beginner’s guide to how they work (https://www.bankrate.com/banking/what-is-a-digital-wallet/)

Why Should You Use a Digital Wallet? (https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/card-smarts/8-reasons-to-use-a-digital-wallet/)

What Is A Digital Wallet? (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/digital-wallet.asp)