Mobile payment: which applications to pay with your smartphone

This is a mobile payment application for self -employed workers, but also SMEs. Izettle offers payments with smartphones and tablets and has partnerships with many banking establishments and companies in the telecommunications sector.

Top 7 mobile payment applications

The Gocardless content creation team is a group of experts in the field in several fields of Gocardless. The authors and revisers work in sales, marketing, legal and finance departments. All have in -depth knowledge and experience of the various aspects of payment systems technology and operating rules applicable to each. The team has expertise in well-established payment networks such as direct debit in the United Kingdom, the European SEPA network and the US network ACH, as well as in the Networks operating in Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. See the full biography

Last modification March 2022 – 2 min read

The payment applications are numerous and varied in a world where habits change quickly due to the development of payments with smartphones or online through e-commerce platforms. Thus, there are several payment applications, where the customer can make a payment with his debit and credit card.

Here, 7 payment applications to consider for an entrepreneur, be it mobile payment solutions, NFC and contactless payment applications or M-commerce payment solutions. Whatever the nature of your professional activity and your needs, these different payment applications should be taken into account to make an optimal and judicious choice for the development of your business.

Indeed, offering various and varied means of payment also makes it possible to expand its customers.

Paypal payment application

This is the payment application which is probably the best known of entrepreneurs and consumers. Paypal is an electronic portfolio that the customer can link to a bank account or to several bank accounts. It will be enough for the user to enter their bank data during each transaction. It is possible to use Paypal from a smartphone.

Apple Pay payment application

Apple Pay uses NFC technology and works on Apple devices, that is to say iPhone. The user may use the Apple Pay mobile payment application through the Apple Wallet, which is an application integrated into the Apple devices operating system (IOS). Apple Wallet allows you to store user bank details such as the debit card number. Any entrepreneur may have an electronic payment terminal that accepts Apple Pay as a means of payment.

The Izettle payment application

This is a mobile payment application for self -employed workers, but also SMEs. Izettle offers payments with smartphones and tablets and has partnerships with many banking establishments and companies in the telecommunications sector.

The Google Pay payment application

Formerly Android Pay, this is an electronic wallet system, which allows payments with tablets and smartphones. Payments are made through the Android operating system. It should be noted that the Google Pay app has an API that can be integrated into an online store. It will be enough for the customer to download the mobile payment application.

The Samsung Pay payment application

The Samsung Pay bank payment application allows on the one hand to make payments in store, thanks to contactless payment and on the other hand online through its application for purchases on the Internet, without having to enter the customer , the debit card number . The Samsung Pay payment application allows you to make contactless payments and use a loyalty card for customers.

The Smile and Pay payment application

It should be noted that Smile and Pay has a partnership with Fintech Anytime, in addition to its payment terminal, it is possible to accept customer payments by bank card, with invoicing on the basis of the volume of transactions.

The Lydia payment application

It is possible to offer a mobile payment application through the Lydia Pro solution. The entrepreneur can use his phone or tablet as a way to collect the different payments of his customers. There will be no need to install an electronic payment terminal or take out a VAD contract with a bank.

If the entrepreneur wishes to offer payments through automatic samples, he may consider the online payment solution Gocardless.

It will be an innovative means to optimize the recurring and punctual payments of different customers.

Gocardless simplifies the collection of recurring payments

Save time by automating your recurring payments in all serenity.

Mobile payment: which applications to pay with your smartphone ?

In recent years, it is possible to pay with your smartphone in store thanks to certain applications. But this market is still in development, and making this type of payment is not always simple … explanations.

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This is a fact, mobile payment progresses in France and accelerated with the health crisis linked to the COVVI-19. According to The echoes, 794 million payments were made thanks to a mobile phone in 2019, against 190 million in 2018, which represents an increase of 318 %. If the amount associated with these payments remains much lower than 599 billion euros spent by bank card last year, this multiplication is a sign of an increasing adoption of payment by smartphone. And with the pandemic of Covid-19, this adoption could well accelerate.

To better understand what this is, the writing of Digital offers you to study how it works and the various applications already available on the market.

Paying without contact with your smartphone, how it works ?

Contactless payment applications connect to your current account to allow you to pay with your mobile. Once this connection has been made, it is generally enough to identify by password or by biometric verification, and to approach your card with a payment terminal so that the transaction is carried out. Similitudes with a classic payment in classless contact are numerous, and it is no coincidence: the technology used, the NFC (for Near-Field Communication, or “Communication in the near field” in French) is used in both case.

To put it simply, the NFC is a technology that allows two close terminals – such as a phone and a payment terminal – to send you contactless data using short waves. On a compatible smartphone, payment applications use the NFC chip to store encrypted payment data, like the bank card chip. On the other hand, the telephone battery must be busy enough to be able to pay (mainly to ensure the safety of the transaction), which is not the case for a conventional blue card. Without battery, no possibility of paying. Therefore, be sure to keep a conventional bank card on you to avoid delicate situations.

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What advantages in relation to traditional contactless payment ?

• No payment ceiling imposed by law

Unlike cardless payment by card, you can pay sums much higher than the traditional ceilings of € 30 and € 50, without having to receive the payment terminal. If this is the case, most applications require a biometric verification, to make sure that it is you who make the transaction. A ceiling also exists for mobile payment, but it is equal to the payment ceiling for the associated bank card (which can range from € 1,000 to more than € 10,000 per month depending on your bank and the type of card).

On Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, you can connect bank cards from different banks on the same phone. No need to find out which card is the right one in your wallet, just select directly in the application which uses for payment.

• The phone, an accessory that you always have on you

Finally, it is (generally) more difficult to forget your phone than your wallet, because it is also our main means of communication. Even if it is not your main means of payment, being able to pay with your mobile is therefore always useful in the event of forgetting or loss of wallets.

The main contactless payment services

Mobile payment services are legion, but four “contactless” applications share the bulk of the market: Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Paylib.

Apple Pay, leader in mobile payment

In France, Apple launched its mobile payment application in 2016. Accessible exclusively on iOS, it allows Apple users to pay in many stores, online and in the contact.
Its particularity lies in its integration pushed into the Apple ecosystem: as it is only available on iOS, Apple Pay therefore has various functionalities such as native management of applications on OS and compatibility with Apple Watch. Please note, no other “contactless” mobile payment application is available for Apple devices, which forces you to use Apple Pay if you have an iPhone.

Fortunately for iOS users, Apple Pay is compatible with the vast majority of traditional French banks and neobancs. According to a Statita study, 41 % of French users who paid with their smartphone used Apple Pay between March 2019 and March 2020, making it the most used mobile payment application in France. In addition, Apple is committed not to keep payment data on its servers, and not to send it to the seller during a transaction.

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Google Pay

Fruit of the merger between Android Pay and Google Wallet, which occurred in 2018, Google Pay is available for all Android phones, provided you have a phone with Android 5.0 (or more) compatible with the NFC. The application, relatively easy to use, already allows you to pay online, in unontact, and to send money to your friends. A major update, scheduled for 2021 also provides to extend the available features, in order to improve the interface and offer loyalty offers and reduction coupons.

However, we regret the lack of compatibility with French banks “in hard”, because only neobanks are supported by the mobile application.

Samsung Pay

Telephone holders have surely already seen it on their devices, but the Korean brand also has a contactless payment application, available since 2018 in France. Beyond the payment functionality, this application also makes it possible to collect loyalty points, in order to be able to exchange them for discounts and gifts. Please note, Samsung Pay is only accessible to the Korean brand phones users. If you have an Android phone from another brand, you will not be able to use this application.

Paylib, the French initiative

The Paylib service was founded in 2013 by BNP Paribas, La Banque Postale and Société Générale, to allow their customers to pay easily online. Unlike other services in this file, Paylib does not have a dedicated application. Indeed, each partner bank with this French mobile payment service implements the latter in its own way in a owner application. Banks therefore have different levels of compatibility with Paylib: some allow just payment with friends, while others use it as a complete NFC payment solution. To see the details of the different Paylib implementations, the best solution is to go directly to the service website.

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A technology that is not supported everywhere

Mobile payment is still very marginal in France: according to Statita forecasts, the penetration rate of mobile payment on the French market in 2019 would be only 2.2 %, a very low figure compared to 35.2 % of China. Even if this means of payment is gradually gaining ground, it is therefore far from being accepted by all traders and all banks.

The possibility of paying with a phone in a business generally depends on the desire of the merchant and on the request he has for such a means of payment. Indeed, taking charge of mobile payment is a relatively simple operation, because the main mobile payment applications have signed contracts with a large number of payment solutions providers. If the owner already accepts contactless payment by bank card, there is a good chance that it is enough to activate an option to unlock mobile payment. For online purchases, the main services (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc.) also have partnerships with the largest e-commerce platforms. If that is not enough, APIs (programming interfaces) exist to integrate each means of payment into a site without too many complications.

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Banking compatibility with mobile payment applications, on December 7, 2020

What slows down the adoption of mobile payment is therefore not to be found on the side of shops, but rather on the side of consumers: indeed, all banks are not partners of the services mentioned above, and when they are, They are not with everyone … The management of the applications of this file generally depends on the policy of each bank. In June 2020, the BPCE group (Banque Populaire & Caisse d’Épargne), for example, announced to abandon Paylib, probably due to too low demand from their customers. Shortly after, the group also said that it would not take Google Pay in charge either due to concerns about the protection of user data. If you are in a bank that is not compatible with the mobile payment application you want to use, everything is not lost. Indeed, it is enough to create an account in a neobank compatible with mobile payment (Lydia, Revolut, Max, etc.) and to link this new account to the payment application to bypass the limit. The account then acts as an intermediary between the two non -compatible services, with little (or even) costs to pay.

The NFC is not the only way to pay by phone: the example of Lyf Pay

NFC payment occupies a place of choice vis-à-vis mobile payment, but it is not the only existing means. Indeed, certain applications, such as Lyf Pay and Lydia, allow to pay with a barcode or a QR code. Such a solution has its own advantages: Lyf Pay allows in particular to pay and share your loyalty card with a single QR code, to simplify the payment process and limit contacts. The application also has features that Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay do not have, such as payment without going to the cashier (Scan & Go, Click & Collect, payment at the table). “Our objective is to be present throughout the user’s route, by aggregating all payment and purchase uses in a single application”, explains Christophe Dolique, CEO of Lyf Pay. “The objective of Lyf Pay is to offer the right payment service to the user, at the right time.”” To do this, the Lyf Pay teams recently made an in -depth overhaul of the application to refocus it around the three blocks that are cash payment, “remote” payment (without going to cash) and payment with friends.