Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other digital wallets are revolutionizing the checkout experience to make swiping your debit or credit card easier and more secure than ever. Here’s a rundown on how digital wallets work, and how to add your Ascend Visa debit or credit card to a digital wallet.

How do digital wallets work?

Digital wallets transfer money from customer to vendor via tokenization – a process that takes sensitive information like your card number and replaces it with a random value.

When you make a payment with one of these services, the app creates a token – a random series of numbers – corresponding to your account, along with a one-time security key. It transmits that data to the payment terminal, which sends that token to the token vault, a secure database linking these tokens to actual accounts.

If the security key is correct, the token vault transmits a charge directly to the linked cards and returns a verification of funds to the payment terminal. Since the token vault is hosted at the payment processor, the point-of-sale terminal never sees your card information.

Are digital wallets safe?

Yes! In fact, through the process of tokenization, digital wallets often provide greater security than normal card payments.

In an ordinary payment, the terminal reads your card information and then transmits it to the payment processor, which then transmits it to your financial institution. This means your information is stored in three different places.

With tokenization, though, your information is seen only by the payment processor and your financial institution, making fewer points of vulnerability for your data. This also means that Apple and Samsung have no idea what purchases you’re making. If you value privacy, mobile wallets are the way to go.

How do I start my digital wallet?

Ascend offers fast, free, and convenient digital banking options for our members. For videos on how to specifically set up Apple Pay and Google Pay, click the appropriate link below:

Now that you know what digital wallets are, how safe they are, and how to put your Ascend card on a digital wallet, consider checking out our card control features so you can have even more control of how and where your Ascend cards are used.