SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of the Screw the Commute podcast, Tom Antion discusses how to pay for purchases using smartphones and smartwatches, including his experience with a Garmin fitness watch and mobile wallet technology.
Main Topics Covered
• Tom explains that he usually waits until technology becomes stable and reliable before adopting it, which he calls “dull edge technology.”
• He recently started using:
o Apple Pay on his iPhone
o Garmin Pay on a Garmin Instinct 3 fitness watch
• He describes paying with a watch as feeling like “007,” but says it is less convenient than Apple Pay because:
o Garmin Pay requires entering a 4-digit code
o Navigation on the watch is slower and cumbersome
o Some cards, such as American Express, are not supported
Security and Safety
Tom discusses the security features of smartwatch payments:
• If someone repeatedly enters the wrong password, the watch resets and removes stored cards
• He notes that many experts consider phone payments safer than swiping physical cards because:
o Stores never see the actual card number
o Systems use tokenization instead of transmitting card data
NFC Technology
The episode explains NFC (Near-Field Communication):
• NFC enables contactless payments by tapping or holding a phone/watch near a payment terminal
• The NFC logo usually looks like several curved wave lines
• Many payment terminals support NFC even if the logo is not visible
Mobile Wallet Platforms Mentioned
Tom references the three major mobile wallet ecosystems:
• Apple Pay
• Google Wallet
• Samsung Wallet
He explains that users can:
• Store multiple cards
• Select different cards for different purchases
• Easily configure wallets through phone settings or online tutorials
Store Compatibility Issues
Tom notes that not all retailers fully support contactless payment:
• Some stores accept mobile payment only at self-checkout
• Some terminals work while others in the same store do not
• He mentions:
o Lowe's
o The Home Depot
o Walmart
He explains that retailers like Walmart prefer customers use their own apps because they can:
• Track purchase behavior
• Send targeted coupons and promotions
• Gather shopping analytics and location data
QR Code Payments
The episode also touches on QR-code-based payment systems:
• Often used in restaurants, gas stations, and loyalty programs
• Commonly associated with:
o PayPal
o Venmo
o Cash App
Practical Advice
Tom recommends:
• Starting simple when trying mobile payments for the first time
• Practicing before using it in a busy checkout line
• Always carrying a physical backup card in case the system fails
Additional Promotion
At the end of the episode, Tom promotes:
• His automation book
• His mentorship program
• His online marketing school:
o IMTCVA.org
o Great Internet Marketing Training
He emphasizes that digital marketing and AI skills are increasingly valuable and that many companies prioritize practical skills over traditional college degrees.

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Episode 1126 – Paying With Your Cell Phone
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1126 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about paying with your cell phone, paying for stuff. And also guess what? With a fitness watch, I'm paying stuff with a fitness watch that looked like 007. All right, let's see. Hope you didn't miss episode 1125. That was computer tuneups for PC and Mac. See if you're fighting with your computer because you don't ever tune it up. It's like your car. If it never had a tune up, you wouldn't be running too good. See? So that's what the what. 1125 and none of it is geek work. There might be 1 or 2 things that I talk about that you'd want to have a geek to do one time, but really make you work faster and be able to sell more stuff and take care of customers rather than fighting with your computer. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then episode number. Computer tuneup was 1125. I pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the latest, but there's one thing in it called shortcut keys that I have been promoting for many years. Save me literally. We estimated about 10 million keystrokes over the years. All right. Just all kinds of great things from this. But it's no longer a program that's mentioned in version 3.0. It's now a browser extension. So I want you to know that. All right. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingtraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV.
[00:02:04] All right. So this this might be a little juvenile for those of you that have been doing this for a long time. But but but for a long time, I've watched people touch their phone when they went to pay for stuff. Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know I use what I call dull edge technology. I don't do anything until all the bugs are out and the geeks have figured it out, and I know it works. And so that's where I'm at now. And so for a while I've been using my cell phone to pay for stuff, but I'm going to tell you about this 007 stuff. I got a Garmin Instinct three fitness watch, and it has a thing that it's compatible with called Garmin Pay. And and so I can hold my hand to the, to the terminal and it'll Pay for stuff, right? So it's like 007 now. It's cool, all right. But it's way more cumbersome than my than my Apple Pay, which I can do with these two quick tips or quick push the buttons on the side of my iPhone and it's ready to go. This one, I got to put in a four digit code and it's not easy to do.
[00:03:29] You gotta hit the code and then hit another button to move to the next number that you want to type in and whatever. So it's don't do it. Put it this way when you're in a busy place. All right. Try it out. So people say, well, that's crazy paying with your watch. So if somebody steals your watch, well, here's the thing. If they in this particular case, I'm sure all the other ones are the same. If they allow this, that if somebody tries the password too often, it resets and wipes out the whole to defaults and wipes out the credit cards you have stored and all that. So it's not really that dangerous to do this unless somebody, you know, cut your arm off and knows your password right now. Apple watches will do it. The Apple Watch Ultra, I'm not sure about all of them, but these ones were Garmin Instinct three. That's the one I have and the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra. But here's the other thing. That's why it's not as convenient for me, is I like to pay with my Amex card. And Amex cards don't work with this. All right. So so not all credit cards. Now they have a list of all the ones that are compatible with.
[00:04:53] So I just went to some Chase visa or something and it works. All right. So anyway, so you can pay with your watch. But if you want something more easier to deal with and that, you know is going to work your, your Apple Pay and your Google Pay and your Samsung thing, they all work pretty good. Now, the technology that we're mostly using is called NFC, and that stands for near-field communication. Doesn't really matter to you at all as long as it works right. So it turns your phone into like a super smart contactless. In other words, you don't touch anything. Credit card. But it's not a card. It's your phone. Now, the other thing, that's the little downside of this, which hasn't been really a problem for me, is that not all stores allow this for a long time. Lowes was a big holdout. And now some lows do it and some don't. Home depot, some do and some don't. For a long time you had to have the physical card there and then other companies. Let's take Walmart for instance. They want you to use their app because they want your buying behavior. See, when you use these other things like Apple Pay, they don't get any of your, your card number or your buying habits or anything. See, it's, it's different. But Walmart wants to you and to engage with the app and they can get all your buying behavior data.
[00:06:48] You know what you buy, how often you buy. Now another thing they can send you coupons and, and discounts and deals and all directly to you so that and other stores do that, but Apple Pay and Garmin Pay, they hide your data. And so those stores don't like that. And like I said, when you're using the Walmart app, they can send you coupons. They can send you notifications of sales coming up. They can even location track. What stores do you do you shop at? What's your purchase history and all that. And some of these stores, especially if they haven't really been in love with this technology, there's kind of quirks to the system. So in some stores, self checkout accepts your your cell phone deal, but their regular checkout doesn't. All right. And even as far as one terminal in the store works, but another one doesn't. All right. So it is a good idea to always keep a physical card handy to back up to to do this because you don't want to get stuck with a big pile of stuff you're trying to buy, and then it won't work. All right, now, this NFC thing I mentioned, you've all seen it. Every time you go somewhere it looks it's a logo. It kind of looks like um, an audio file.
[00:08:27] Uh, you know, like three little half moons and there might be more than three, I can't remember, but they're on their side and it may have the NFC logo next to it. That's where you touch your, your phone to, to get it to buy. And some of them don't have that logo, but they do accept it. So you have to move your phone around on the screen a little bit to see where the sensor grabs your your stuff, say, but again, the store doesn't see your card number. So that's a big advantage of this. And many experts say that it's safer than actually swiping your card, say. And the three biggies are Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. And so for Apple Pay now, like I said, I don't use a Google Wallet or Samsung, but I just went to the wallet app and put in my details. You know, they're going to which card you want to use, your name, address, phone number, prove it's, you know, all that stuff and you can put in more than one. So when you go to use this, like I hit a double click on my apple or my iPhone, and I can pick which credit card I want to use. Well, I only put one in there because I like to use my Amex card, but you can pick different ones for different purposes for different types of purchases.
[00:09:53] So, so that's a pretty common thing. And all you got to do is if you don't know how to do it on your phone, just Google, Google it or YouTube it and they'll show you there's a million people talking about this stuff. All right. Now there's another type of of code that you might get sometimes. And that's a QR code like the terminal could display a QR code or your phone displays a QR code and the terminal swipe, you know, grabs it or vice versa. And a lot of times you see this at restaurants and gas stations and other in some small businesses and, and loyalty systems, like if they have a frequent buyer program or something like that. And typically it's a PayPal or Venmo or Cash app deal that uses the QR codes more than the, the NFC thing. And then you have like Walmart, you have the very store specific ones, Starbucks, Walmart. And it's the same as I mentioned before, they want your data so that they can remarket to you like crazy. So what I suggest is that you start simple. Don't go into the first time you try this at some busy store and people were lined up behind you thinking you're an idiot. All right. So. So if you're going to try it, get it all ready.
[00:11:15] I mean, you can actually try it without buying anything just on your phone. Like on my iPhone, I can hit double tap. It opens up the wallet and it says lean towards the terminal. Well, there's no terminal here, so it just doesn't do anything. But that's what you got to do on Apple is you double click the thing wallet opens and you just lean it towards the terminal and bam, bam. Thank you ma'am. There's the sale went through. So there you go. If you want to get if you know, like I said, some of you this might be juvenile for. But I mean, there's lots and lots of people out there that I see only using their, their cards rather than just holding their phone. And like I said, it could be safer than your card because the company doesn't see your number at all. They use what they call a token system, which I don't pretend to understand or care. It just works. All right, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you want help with this and a million other things, you need to be successful in a digital world. Check out my mentor program, greatinternetMarketingtraining.com in my school. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And it's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia.
[00:12:34] But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning. Probably save you a couple hundred grand for your own education or one of your loved ones, and you'll actually have a skill that companies want. You know, a lot of companies, big companies, Google, IBM, Intel, all these don't require college education anymore to get good, high paying jobs. They want people with skills. And these are the skills that are in high demand, including our new section we're putting in on AI, and we upgrade our stuff all the time. Because this is a changing field you go to. Even if you took an e-commerce course at a big company or a big university, you think they changed their curriculum every day like we might do or every week? No. And they're not taught by multi-millionaires either. All right. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. and if you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to the school that you can gift to a loved one or somebody important in your life. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. You're going to hear from our super, super it guy Larry, on Monday, talking about some Zoom things you might not know how to use. All right, we'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.