I really enjoy the convenience of instant payments that iCard gives me and I’m not saying this because I do marketing for the company.
The technology had in fact subtly affected how I predict, interact and behave – in a positive way.
My usual way to instant value transfer was cash – fast, feasible and old-school.
The NEW ways to instant value transfer: Tap & Pay and Person-2-Person with iCard.
It’s free of course and no bank branch visits are required to open or operate a money account with iCard.
Friends, family and people you know in Europe are now even closer with iCard Messenger.
I am talking about real-time transactions and 100% private conversations within my modern digital wallet.
I appreciate the conveniences of cash, but it comes with 5 set-back factors:
- Risk of losing cash
- Risk of being handed counterfeit banknotes (minimal, but risk)
- Takes time to do ATM visits
- Takes more time to pay by cash than with a Digital Wallet
- Takes more space in larger amounts
I seem to have made a proactive choice to minimize those risks and avail more time by switching to iCard digital wallet.
iCard, with a Standard account, had become my alternative to cash.
I do Instant Mobile Tap & Pay, with Mastercard and my Android phone, anywhere contactless payments are accepted.
It’s cool and I get lots of eyeballing when I tap my phone.
I also get questioned a lot to only share what I know and observe even more curiosity. Sometimes I get bits of scepticism from the late adopter types.
Paying with my phone seemed to happen faster than cash, or at least as fast, but with an added fingerprint protection.
I did a quick search and found information about a study done by American Express which confirmed my observations:
“a non-contact transaction is 52 percent faster than a contact-based payment. Compared to cash, the time saving is even 63 percent.”
Pity, but iCard is unable to serve Tap & Pay to iPhone users due to NFC module being locked for apps like iCard. Good, I run on Android 🙂 Keep reading to discover what iCard does to tackle this little issue.
I also do Instant P2P or account-to-account transfers to contacts on iCard.
I keep sharing iCard with people around me.
My handyman, who now has a Standard account, gets my instant P2P transfers instead of cash. My dentist is a millennial, just like me, so he was already on iCard and was happy to accept any kind of money. I split bills with friends through iCard. And I sometimes send small amounts of money to my non-expecting contacts, who are not on iCard, to just start a conversation, catch up, get opinions and see how smooth their onboarding goes.
Enabling progress feels good.
As a company, we constantly talk to our clients to discover their preferences, pain-points and stories.
We’ve gotten tons of great feedback from people thanking us for saving their day, for showing them a great bank account alternative with no monthly fees. They really appreciate the fact that account opening works from a phone, at home.
It feels good when your work is improving lives.
I’ve personally encountered an urgent cash-less situation. I don’t fish, but I do enjoy freshly picked sea clams in the beginning of the summer season. Just last weekend we visited our favorite beach, and the 40 km trip includes a 5 km dirt road to get to the sea. Car broke down exactly when I was having my off-screen day – exactly the day I did not care about cash, cards or digital wallets. My friend, who had been resisting iCard, finally had to open an account, so my wife can immediately send money to his account. Then he paid roadside assistance with Mobile Tap & Pay.
Later, I was buzzing my friend in iCard messenger with a “Money request”.
100% secure chat conversations that make financial sense.
I’m all over different messenger services and I haven’t really had the chance to send/request money through the iCard Messenger, but I’ve seen a lot of great feedback at the office.
It appears people do send a lot of payments through the chat. And it’s not so much about the end-to-end encrypted conversations that never land a server, but about knowing you have a direct connection to friends and family – within the money context. Any time someone needs you, you can instantly solve their troubles.
It feels good.
How did all this change my behavior?
Through my own experience, I started noticing how this new way of payments is changing the way I act and plan.
I save time by having reduced my ATM visits (and save on ATM costs).
I save time by paying with my Android phone (settlement in my account is real-time and usually beats the receipt printer).
I save time by not worrying and predicting money situations less.
I have a piece of mind, because my closest people are always a tap away in case of money emergency.
It was funny when I suddenly switched from a cash-preferred lifestyle to contactless mobile payments.
Of course, even if you live in a country with high digital payments acceptance, you can end up in a situation where only cash is accepted … or in my case, it was awkward and funny. I was buying a slightly used lawn mower, just now for spring, from a person, through a local marketplace app. We met face-to-face with the seller, engine started at the first try, I smiled, ready to do the deal, to only realize I was there cashless.
I couldn’t convince the person to open an account with iCard almost instantly and get his money in his phone. The seller had a smartphone but was frustrated with the idea. He preferred waiting on my ATM discovery trip, but when I got back, he was actually curious about how it is possible to get his money instantly with no cash changing hands.
Now, I have a better grip of this cashless innovation & lifestyle. I always try to immediately replenish my backup cash stash – just for cases like this – when the nearest ATM visit is a 10-15 minute round trip.
I choose to be an early adopter and will keep paying with my digital wallet. I want to take part in enabling a new way of instant & mobile money transfers.
And of course, I still carry my wallet because ID has not been digitized yet.
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