Step-by-step instructions
Pay mobile: How to load your bank card onto your smartphone
Dig for cash while shopping? This is hardly popular anymore. And even the card often gets stuck because the trend is towards mobile payments. Here’s how to make your smartphone and smartwatch fit for this.
Updated 12/27/2024 – 10:17 am|Reading time: 3 min.
Why pay in cash or take out your card when you can just take out your cell phone? According to a study by Postbank, a good third of consumers now use smartphones or smartwatches to pay in stores. Anyone who has stored their payment cards digitally there just needs to hold the device up to the card terminal and that’s it.
Most people have their smartphone or smartwatch at hand more quickly than their wallet. Financial institutions are pushing mobile payments by increasingly offering this virtual function to their customers. This is attractive from a banking perspective. In contrast to plastic cards, “the service is cheaper,” says Sarah Palurovic, an expert in mobile payments at the digital association Bitkom.
But how do bank and credit cards get on the smartphone and what else is important? A step-by-step guide.
Some banks indicate the option of mobile payment directly on their website. One click then takes you to the application. If you can’t find the information straight away, enter the term mobile or digital payment in the search function. If you can’t find what you’re looking for or the financial institution doesn’t offer a solution, you should ask your customer advisor.
The banks provide information on their websites about which payment cards you can load into the wallet, i.e. your digital wallet. “The institutes handle this differently,” says David Riechmann from the North Rhine-Westphalia Consumer Center. While some allowed debit cards, others limited their use to credit cards.
The service providers with whom the banks cooperate also play a role. They are almost always called Google Pay for Android phones or Apple Pay for iPhones. According to Riechmann, there are also financial institutions that work with their own pay apps. But the principle is similar: load the app, select the card, confirm, use.
A majority of the apps work via NFC technology. This means that data is transmitted contactlessly over distances of just a few centimeters, as is usual at a cash register terminal.
Apple mobile phones are usually automatically open to NFC, explains Palurovic. In contrast, owners of Android devices often have to activate the interface first. The button required for this can be found in the settings under the keyword Connections.
Open the mobile payment application on the bank’s website. There you download the app, which is usually free. Provided it matches the smartphone’s operating system. You usually identify yourself beforehand with your online banking data.
From the cards displayed on your phone, select the one you want to go to your banking app or wallet and add it. “Depending on the situation, the system then either requires the card number to be entered manually or the plastic card to be read,” explains Palurovic. To do this, the physical card is scanned with the cell phone camera.
At the end of the process, the information is checked. The bank requires you to enter a TAN or a code, which it sends via SMS, says Riechmann. In addition, confirmation of the terms of use is required. Sometimes authentication via fingerprint or facial recognition is also required.
Only then does the digital wallet connect to the checking account. “The wallet is the platform and the device is the medium for providing products and services,” says Bitkom expert Palurovic, describing the technical process.
All steps completed? Then the selected payment card will appear in the smartphone wallet. It is now ready for use at the checkout. By the way, this also works without an internet connection.
Smartwatches can often be synchronized with your cell phone. This simplifies setting up the digital wallet on the smartwatch. “You don’t have to enter the data separately, but you may have to confirm it again,” says Palurovic.
By the way: Anyone who has gotten used to mobile payment should keep an eye on the charging status of their smartphone or smartwatch when shopping. “If the battery is empty, the digital card no longer works,” says Riechmann. His tip: Don’t rely solely on mobile payments, but ideally always have your wallet with you.