Imagine if every time you wanted to pay for anything you would need to go down to your local bank and make a deposit into another account, write out a check, or pay in cash. Thankfully, times have changed, and an enormous amount of money changes hands every second of every day online. Whether we’re using the convenience of our bank’s online platforms to make digital payments or we’re transacting online, we’re making use of the many different ways there are to pay for goods or receive money on the internet. Here are some of the biggest and most used payment methods today.
PayPal
To many of us, PayPal is likely to be one of the first, if not the first, names you mention when asked about online payment processors. The service boasts well over 250 million users and lets anyone transact online for a small transaction fee. Many online stores and services support PayPal as a payment method at checkout for online shopping, and you can even send people money personally simply by using their email address. If you need to load money into your online casino account, PayPal could be a good choice.
Google Pay
Google Pay has strong tie-ins to Google’s products like their Android operating system and the Chrome web browser, but it competes with PayPal in many ways. Users of the service can use Google Pay to transact online in much the same way they’d use a credit card or PayPal by selecting Google Pay at checkout. It offers an advantage over PayPal, as it doesn’t charge you or the company you’re purchasing from a fee for transactions.
Apple Pay
Where Google Pay tries to entice you and the companies you shop from to integrate their service into the checkout process, Apple Pay keeps things on the device. Since over 60% of people in the US have Apple devices, this means that Apple Pay can offer a convenient payment method. Ultimately, Apple Pay is charging your credit card, but it wins for convenience. Newer options like contactless payment using your iPhone or Apple Watch make Apple Pay an attractive option for users of these devices.
Credit Card
Visa and Mastercard both offer online transactions, both via first-party implementations like Visa Checkout and Masterpass respectively, or via third-party payment processors like Stripe or Square. The credit or debit card is one of the most often used payment methods by those making payments to companies offering products or services online, but newer and safer technologies like Instant EFT are waiting in the wings to take some of the market shares of our humble plastic friend still holds.
Like most people who have ready access to the internet, the days of carrying cash around with us have fallen by the wayside in favor of credit or debit cards or online purchasing. Years of technical innovations and advances have made this possible and along with the incredible logistics network that’s involved in getting your online purchases to your door, online payments are one of the modern world’s most important innovations.
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