Paying with your mobile phone is one of the most convenient ways to do it today. We do it continuously in stores, at gas stations… And we simply have to bring the mobile phone close to the compatible dataphone to make the transaction and confirm that we are the owners. But what is better? Is better pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay? There are several methods to choose from.
When we go to pay by phone we choose an application where we enter our bank details and it is the one that we must open when we are going to use the card through the mobile. But there are several and not just one. You can use Apple Pay or you can use Google Pay. In any case, which one is better and which should you use?
According to an interesting thread by Alex Yu on Twitter, we can see how one or the other handles sensitive information of the card if you are wondering what is the safest way to pay from your mobile phone. Although both are completely secure systems that do not put your data at risk, they work differently.
alex xu@alexxubyte/1 How do Apple Pay and Google Pay handle sensitive card info?The diagram below shows the differences. Both approaches are very secure, but the implementations are different. To understand the difference, we break down the process into two flows. https://t.co/3jWwXmALBA
September 21, 2022 • 17:53
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How does Apple Pay do it?
Apple Pay does not store any card information but, as we can see in the image, it directly passes the card information to the bank and the bank returns a token called “DAN” or Device Account Number (device account number) that the iPhone stores on a chip.
From this chip the DAN goes to the store where we are going to pay with the mobile phone and the merchant sends the DAN to the bank so you know what to charge and who to charge it to.
How does Google Pay do it?
The process in the case of Google Pay is different. As we see in the diagram, Google registers the card in the mobile phone and sends the information to a Google server. From the server, a payment token is returned to the phone and that payment token is “sent” to the merchant where we are going to pay. The merchant sends the payment to the Google server and finally from the server the card information corresponding to the token would go to the bank.
Unlike Apple, what Google does is that the store pass the payment token to the google server and the server looks up the card information and passes it to the bank.
What is better?
Both methods are completely secure and simply change the way the information is sent. As Yu explains in his conclusion, Apple needs to send the DAN information with the bank and it may be slower but the card information only goes through the public network once while Google goes through the public network twice: in step two and step four (from the mobile to the server and from the server to the bank) but always with encrypted and secure information.
Whichever you use, both options are safe and you shouldn’t worry.
