The new Google Wallet, with its integrated Google Pay service, was launched in South Africa this week. Secure, convenient, frictionless and simple to use, it eliminates the need for physical payment cards, loyalty cards, medical aid cards and other plastic that is stuffed in your wallet. It even stores your digital car key and boarding pass, so everything’s easily accessible and — critically — safe.
Paysafe, the multinational online payments company, has identified digital wallets as the most popular payment method after debit and credit cards. Consumers say they are convenient and simple to use — particularly on mobiles, where entering payment details can be frustrating.
With digital wallets, customers do not have to share their card details for the payment to go through. Because mobile payments are heavily encrypted and tokenised, digital wallets are said to be more secure than physical cards. Yunusov sent the money back after he showed off the hacks, “proving long-known, still unfixed vulnerabilities in an Apple Pay feature allowing people to pay for transport options like the London Underground… with a quick tap and go, with no need to unlock the phone”.
Noëlle Van der Waag-Cowling, a cybersecurity and emerging tech threat expert at Stellenbosch University’s Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, says there are security pros and cons to using digital wallets. The biggest drawback is that your phone becomes a substantial single point of failure.