Accept mobile wallet payments with Square Point of Sale
About accepting mobile wallet payments
Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay are all automatically accepted mobile wallets for contactless transactions with Square Point of Sale apps. This requires no additional setup or configuration in your account to get started. You can also accept contactless in-person payments with Afterpay using Afterpay Card.
Before you begin
There are important things to note as a Square seller and a cardholder when accepting payments with a digital wallet on smartphones or smartwatches — particularly regarding card tokenization. Tokenization is a security measure that adds an extra level of safety to sensitive credit card data. It’s the process of protecting sensitive data by replacing it with an algorithmically generated number called a token.
Just like the use of chip and PIN cards, tokenization helps to prevent bad actors from duplicating your bank information onto another card. While chip and PIN cards protect against fraud that occurs when someone pays at a physical store, tokenization is primarily designed to fight online or digital breaches.
To learn more, visit our What Is a Card-Not-Present (CNP) Transaction and Why It Costs More blog article.
Card numbers and locations for mobile wallet payments
When accepting digital wallet payments, you or your customers may notice varying card numbers and locations in your records.
You may notice the number on the payment is different from your payment card number. When a contactless payment is made through a digital wallet, a tokenized number is generated to serve as an ID for the payment. To clarify, the actual card number isn’t used for the NFC payment itself, but rather this generated payment token. This means neither your digital wallet provider nor your device sends your actual payment card number.
Digital wallet payments will generate a unique card number which differs from the actual number of the card added to your digital wallet—this way your actual card numbers are never shared with merchants. This is done to provide additional security for digital wallet customers while making payments both online and in-person.
For additional help with your digital wallet, please get in touch with your provider.
When your customer pays for their goods or services via a digital wallet, the geofencing of the digital wallet may cause the location or merchant name to appear differently on their transaction history. When your customers look at their bank statements, they’ll see the charge from your business reflected correctly, but the digital wallet provider may pick up nearby businesses based off that location service.
We recommend that your customer contact their provider directly if their digital wallet or card is picking up the incorrect merchant name.