By Antoine Faure (@faure_ant)Share:

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In recent years, it has been possible to pay with your smartphone in stores thanks to certain applications. But this market is still developing, and making this type of payment is not always easy… Explanations.

It's a fact, mobile payment is progressing in France and has accelerated with the health crisis linked to covid-19. According to Les Échos, 794 million payments were made using a mobile phone in 2019, compared to 190 million in 2018, which represents an increase of 318%. If the amount associated with these payments remains well below the 599 billion euros spent by bank card last year, this multiplication is a sign of a growing adoption of payment by smartphone. And with the Covid-19 pandemic, this adoption may well accelerate.

To better understand what this consists of, the Numeriques editorial team suggests that you study how it works and the different applications already available on the market.

How does contactless payment with your smartphone work?

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 sufficient to identify yourself by password or biometric verification, and to approach your card to a payment terminal for the transaction to be carried out. The similarities with a classic contactless payment are numerous, and this is no coincidence: the technology used, NFC (for Near-Field Communication, or "near field communication" in French) is used in both case.

Simply put, NFC is a technology that allows two nearby terminals — such as a phone and a payment terminal — to send contactless data to each other using short waves. On a compatible smartphone, payment applications use the NFC chip to store encrypted payment data, like a bank card chip. On the other hand, the phone's battery must be charged enough to be able to pay (mainly to ensure the security of the transaction), which is not the case for a classic Carte Bleue. Without battery, no possibility to pay. Therefore, be sure to keep a regular bank card on you to avoid awkward situations.

What are the advantages compared to traditional contactless payment?

Unlike contactless payment by card, you can pay amounts well above the traditional limits of €30 and €50, without having to touch the payment terminal. If so, most apps ask for biometric verification to make sure it's you doing the transaction. A ceiling also exists for mobile payment, but it is equal to the payment ceiling of 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 credit cards from different banks to the same phone. No need to look for which card is the right one in your wallet, you just have to select directly in the application which one to use for the payment.

Finally, it's (usually) harder to forget your phone than your wallet, because it's also our main means of communication. Even if it's not your main means of payment, being able to pay with your mobile is therefore always useful in case you forget or lose your wallet.

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 contactless. Its particularity lies in its extensive integration into the ecosystem. Apple: as it is only available on iOS, Apple Pay therefore has various functionalities such as native support for applications on the OS and compatibility with the Apple Watch. Please note that no other "contactless" mobile payment apps are available for Apple devices, requiring 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 neobanks. According to a Statista 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 has agreed not to keep payment data on its servers, and not to transmit them to the seller during a transaction.

Google Pay

Resulting from 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 higher) compatible with NFC. The application, relatively easy to use, already allows you to pay online, contactless, and to send money to friends. A major update, scheduled for 2021, also plans to expand the features available, to improve the interface and to offer loyalty offers and discount coupons.

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

Samsung Pay

Phone 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 allows the collection of loyalty points, to be able to exchange them for discounts and gifts. Please note that Samsung Pay is only available to users of Korean brand phones. If you have an Android phone from another brand, then 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 the other services in this file, Paylib does not have a dedicated application. Indeed, each partner bank with this French mobile payment service implements it in its own way in a proprietary application. Banks therefore have different levels of compatibility with Paylib: some just allow payment between 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's website.

A technology that is not supported everywhere

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

The possibility of paying with a phone in a trade generally depends on the willingness of the trader and the demand he has for such a means of payment. Indeed, supporting mobile payment is a relatively simple operation, as the main mobile payment applications have signed contracts with a large number of payment solution providers. If the owner already accepts contactless payment by credit card, there is a good chance that activating an option will suffice 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's not enough, APIs (programming interfaces) exist to integrate each payment method into a site without too many complications.

Bank compatibility with mobile payment applications, as of December 7, 2020

What hinders the adoption of mobile payment is therefore not to be sought on the side of the shops, but rather on the side of the consumers: indeed, all the banks are not partners of the services mentioned above, and when they are, they are not with all… Support for applications in this folder generally depends on the policy of each bank. In June 2020, the BPCE group (Banque populaire & Caisse d'Épargne) announced, for example, that it was abandoning Paylib, probably due to too low demand from their customers. Shortly after, the group also announced that it would not support Google Pay either, due to concerns over the protection of user data. If you're at a bank that isn't compatible with the mobile payment app you want to use, all is not lost. Indeed, all you have to do is create an account in a neobank compatible with mobile payment (Lydia, Revolut, Max, etc.) and link this new account to the payment application to circumvent the limit. The account then acts as an intermediary between the two incompatible services, with little (if any) fees to pay.

Intern journalist from August to December 2020. Explores imaginary worlds in search of technologies that do not yet exist.