Best Payment Apps for June 2022: Apple Cash, Cash App, PayPal and More

If you have an iPhone, you can send and receive money directly through the Messages app with Apple Cash. You can use an Apple Cash credit card or debit card to fund a payment.

To initiate a transaction, open the Messages app and select or create a new contact. Tap the Apple Pay icon at the bottom of the screen, choose an amount and tap request or send. Apple says it takes one to three days for transactions to be processed. Apple Cash is free to use — unless you choose an instant transfer, which guarantees processing in under 30 minutes, but comes with a 1.5{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} transaction fee.

Read our Apple Cash explainer.

Once you sign up for Cash App, you’re assigned a $Cashtag — your screen name. You can identify contacts using their email address or phone number. 

Once you add a bank account or credit card, you can send, request and receive money through the app. As long as you’re funding and receiving payments through your bank account, there are no fees or foreign transaction costs. But there is a fee — 3{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} of the transaction amount — if you pay using a credit card.

Cash App typically takes between one and three days to transfer funds. There’s an option to access your money instantly, but you’re charged an additional 1.5{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} fee (with a minimum charge of 25 cents).

Read more about Block’s Cash app.

Google Pay replaced Google Wallet and Android Pay in 2018. You can use it to pay for goods and services as well as send and receive money.

While Apple Pay is exclusive to iPhone users, anyone with a Gmail account can use Google Pay. You can access it directly through the Google Pay app or point your browser to pay.google.com. Transfer to a debit card usually takes 24 hours while transfers to a linked bank account can take up to five days. There are no transaction fees to use Google Pay.

How to set up Google Pay on your Android phone.

One of the first platforms for digital payment, PayPal is free to use as long as it’s connected to a bank account (or you have a PayPal Cash bank account). If you initiate a transaction using a credit card, there’s a 2.9{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} fee, plus $0.30 per transaction. Standard transfers can take one to three days to show up in your account. Instant transfers show up immediately but are charged a 1{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} transaction fee.

Read more about PayPal.

Owned by a collective of seven US financial institutions — Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, PNC, Truist, US Bank and Wells Fargo — Zelle allows you to transfer funds directly between bank accounts. There’s no app to download or account to set up. Just enter the email address or phone number of the person you want to pay, and boom: The transaction is instant, and all of your contact info and bank account details remain private.

You can download the Zelle app or use it on your bank’s website, if it’s one of the 1,300-plus institutions that support it. (Not all banks and credit unions participate, but most do.) While Zelle won’t charge you to send or receive money, some banks may apply fees to transactions made using the technology.

Because of its instant nature and its inability to reverse transactions, Zelle has come under fire for not doing enough to protect consumers from fraud. Indeed, a variety of increasingly common Zelle scams have plagued users across the country in 2022.

Read more about Zelle.