Hi! What alternatives are there to Google Wallet? I am only looking for a secure app that allows me to pay with my phone instead of a card, I do not really care about the rest of functionality
You’re not going to find something outside of official large companies. The reason they work at all is because the money never goes through your account during that transaction, but between the bank and Google/Apple/whoever. It’s all handwaving and trust relationships. A typical tap goes through (basically) these steps.
- Tap
- The phone requests a unique one-time token from Google wallet, which is an intent to pay, signalling that the payment will be authorized
- The POS system takes the token through the tap, sends it to their banking sofware
- The banking system then asks Google/Apple/whoever “Hey is this token legit”. They then validate it
- The money transfers between Google -> Bank. (Google will probably front the actual deployment of money from your bank -> Google -> Their bank)
This is why it’s the most secure, because nowhere in that process can anyone intercept anything about you, all they would get is a one-time use token, which is only good from that specific POS system. Even the POS doesn’t really get much about you except for what Google/Apple responds with.
It’s because of this behind-the-scenes transaction that makes it almost impossible to have an open source version. You would need to convince all of the existing banking infrastructure (who remember still use csv files “wires”) to move money around in batches at night to not only implement Google, Apple, and Samsung, but also the open source app that is totally secure and legit, you can trust us.
Not only that, but you immediately open yourself up to issues with money too. Accepting money is easy, sending money out is just 3 1/2 headaches. Not only do you have the risk, you have security and compliance, you have agencies, you have auditing, FINRA, the SEC can get involved, and that’s only in America. If you want to go international? Hoo boy, just take all of that neasea and personal liability and turn it up to 1000 because now you have to think about every country and their laws.
So, probably more than you wanted to know, but that’s why you’re not going to find one.
Source - worked FinTech for about 7 years, learned way too much about finance back then
Cryptocurrency was supposed to solve this problem; instead we ended up with endless grifting and memecoins designed to leave ignorant rubes holding the bag.
Eh, cryptocurrency was never supposed to solve any problem, it was a proof of concept that pariah states realized could enable them to avoid US sanctions. The “it’s more secure than banks” talking points were conceived after the fact by the grifters.
I think that’s viewing it from the current lens. At the time, the big promise was that you could pay for things without involving all of those pesky big companies. Naive, yes, but the idea of a secure financial transaction is similar in nature to the current tap/wallet methods. But yes, it was commandeered by crooks almost immediately.
Why invite any middleman into your transactions to spy on you at all? Tapping a credit card is the easiest thing to do.
Strapping a card to the back of your phone is really the easiest alternative.
I know this won’t resonate with people but gonna plant the seed anyway:
CASH MONEY, BABY
the OG privacy means of payment.
Lol… One of the few things the Germans are actually doing right IMHO
Paying 3% fee and getting spied on ain’t worth the convenience
Once cash is dead they will increasing the fee… That’s how streaming works once physical media market was gutted.
Use your card.
Works the same way as your phone.
However, if you are looking to store loyalty cards and stuff then catima is very useful.
Samsung Pay Apple Pay
If there are others I don’t know about them. I use Google Wallet.
They’d need to collaborate with a multitude of financial institutions in whichever jurisdictions they’d want to operate in. That’s just a level of resources most FOSS projects don’t have. Plus, I can’t imagine banks would be big proponents of open-source; where’s the money in that?
You can’t just buy into API access for NFC payments. You got to pay somebody big bucks to let you on their network.
I understand that. I think its strange that we collectively consented to that.