The arrival of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay has ushered in a new era for smartphone payments in Italy. In particular, the Cupertino wallet - landed in our country in May 2017 - has contributed decisively to the surge in this sector, which in 2017 recorded transactions for over 70 million euros, against 10 in 2016.
Mind you, the numbers are still very low compared to the general panorama of electronic payments (again in 2017, Italians spent 220 billion using credit cards or debit cards), but what matters in this phase is that the market grows exponentially .
Within a year, 19 card issuers joined Apple Pay, including Carrefour Banca, Unicredit and Banca Mediolanum. Samsung Pay, on the other hand, which only arrived in Italy last March, is currently at 11, including Unicredit, Intesa Sanpaolo and Bnl.
NOT ONLY APPLE PAY AND SAMSUNG PAY
However, those provided by Apple and Samsung are not the only wallets available in Italy. Indeed, the two technology giants landed late on our market, where other services such as those of Unicredit, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banca Mediolanum, Vodafone, Tim, Postemobile and CartaSì were already active.
WHAT ARE WALLETS
All the wallets are based on Nfc technology (Near field communication – the same as the basis of contactless cards) and are, concretely, virtual wallets that allow you to dematerialise credit cards and debit cards on your mobile phone. Naturally, the smartphone must be of the latest generation and support NFC technology.
HOW DO THEY WORK
The mechanism is simple and is more or less the same for all wallets. First, you need to download the application on your phone and use it to make your payment cards virtual. With Apple Pay, for example, to complete this operation it is sufficient to point the card with the camera of the mobile phone.
HOW PURCHASES ARE MADE
After that, to make purchases, just open the app, select the card you want to use, click on "pay" and bring your smartphone close to the Pos (which obviously must be equipped with NFC technology for contactless). If the sum to be paid does not exceed 25 euros, the operations end here. In the case of higher payments, however, it will also be necessary to enter a Pin code. With all due respect to those who argue that wallets are unsafe.
