Lifehack: This is how you pay with your smartphone | Currently

You already use your smartphone for almost everything in life, so why not pay with it too? This is how you manage that on your phone.

Since the arrival of contactless payment, in-store payment is much faster. All you have to do is hold your card on the device and you are done. But you can even get rid of your wallet, because these ATMs also recognize smartphones as a means of payment.

Paying with your smartphone is just as easy as using a bank card: you hold the phone against the payment machine and the rest happens automatically. For small amounts, you don’t have to do anything, but often you have to unlock your phone to agree to the payment. You can do this with a PIN, fingerprint, or face scan.

Since your phone has become a kind of bank card, it is also just as secure as regular debit cards. If you lose your phone unexpectedly, you should block your bank account, but this is also necessary if you lose your card.

The possibility of mobile payment depends on your phone and the bank you are a customer of. Not all banks support mobile payments, or only on certain phones. In any case, you need a smartphone with an NFC chip, which connects to an ATM. Newer models from all major phone brands always have such a chip.

iOS

Payments on iPhones are made via Apple Pay, Apple’s proprietary payment system. This means that your bank must support this app, otherwise you won’t be able to do anything with it. Most of the large banks in the Netherlands now support this, such as ING, Rabobank, ABN AMRO, ASN Bank, RegioBank and SNS Bank.

How you activate it depends on your bank. You usually have to dive into the settings of the companion app. In ING, for example, you’ll find Apple Pay directly in Settings when you tap on your profile. At Rabobank and ABN AMRO, you can go to the Apple Pay option via “self-arrangement”.

Android

Google allows more payment options, so banks on Android phones can offer their own services.

Just like with Apple, Google Pay has its own app, but not all banks support it. The major players are ABN AMRO and Rabobank which uses Google Pay. You can find this option in your banking app settings. In Rabobank, go to Payment Methods, and in ABN you will find the option under Arrange Yourself.

Other banks have their own system to enable mobile payments. At ING, for example, you arrange this via the app that you also use for mobile banking. Here you go through your profile to settings, where you will find the option “Mobile Payment”.

ASN, RegioBank and SNS customers must download a separate application from the bank. With the first two you pay 50 cents a month.