Digital payment methods

0:00- If you've bought anything lately, especially anything online, you've probably seen a screen like this when it's time to pay for things. And you might be wondering, what are all of these different words or names of things like companies Affirm, Shop Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, Venmo.

0:15Oftentimes you'll see Apple Pay, Zelle, things like that. What are all of these things? Well, generally speaking, these are all digital payment methods, but there are some differences to what they are. So the first category I will talk about are digital wallets.

0:32Digital wallets are where you take your credit cards. So this is your credit card right over here, and you link it to a digital wallet that's usually going to be on your phone, sometimes on your watch as well. And what's useful about it is, when you see a payment terminal, it could be online, but it could also be at the store right over here.

0:51When it's time to pay, you can just open up your digital wallet and scan it right over here and it will charge that credit card. Now that's really useful just for convenience. I use my watch a lot for things like that. I don't have to walk around with my credit card and pull it out.

1:05And also, when you pay this way, people don't actually see your credit card, so you could view it as a little bit more secure. So on this screenshot right over here, Google Pay, for example, is a digital wallet. You also have Apple Pay on iOS phones. You also have Samsung Pay.

1:21Once again, these are ways to connect some payment method into this digital wallet. And then you can pay with your phone or your watch or a device like that. Now we see other things here, Shop Pay, that's also actually a form of digital wallet. It also has some buy now, pay later aspects to it, but you've probably heard of PayPal, probably heard of Venmo.

1:41These are apps. And in the case of PayPal or Venmo, these are situations where you would, let's say that this is your bank account or your credit card or some type of payment method, and then you put money into these apps and people can also pay you into these apps.

1:57And then you use these apps to pay for whatever you are actually going to pay for. Now, some of them also, like PayPal, might have buy now, pay later aspects to it, buy now, pay later, where you don't have to pay back immediately. So it really does have some aspects of a credit card, although in some cases they might not charge interest.

2:18We see buy now, pay later very explicitly, right over here with Affirm, they say starting at $39 a month for this purchase right over here, or 0% APR with Affirm. So what they're saying is, Hey, you could just pay this much. Or if you use Affirm, that maybe you don't have to pay any interest.

2:36Always good to look at the details. But keep in mind, even though this is a good deal, or it seems like a good deal, you're borrowing money. And generally speaking, unless you really need to, you're always going to be putting it on the future version of yourself to come up with the money.

2:51And in many cases, it's not clear that your finances will improve then. So always be careful when you are delaying purchases for especially things you don't need. But Affirm is a buy now, pay later. Some of these apps have aspects of buy now, pay later. Now last but not least, you might have also heard of things like Zelle.

3:09Sometimes you've seen it on your bank account, if you've done some digital banking. This is a way to transfer money directly from a bank account. So let's say this is a bank and a bank account and you need to transfer money to a person, or even in certain cases, to another or to a business.

3:26Sometimes you can use Zelle as well, so you don't have to put money into it first and then pay. It goes straight from your bank account. So I'll leave you here. These are all interesting and oftentimes convenient new ways to pay folks above and beyond other payment methods that we're familiar with, like cash, and credit card, and debit cards.