# E-wallet

https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/wallet/

*Last updated: 2026-08-03*

A payment app holding a balance or a linked funding source, paid from a phone rather than a card. Apple Pay and Google Pay pass an underlying card to the terminal and are accepted wherever contactless cards are; Alipay+, WeChat Pay and UnionPay QR are separate rails a merchant enables individually.

## Why it matters to a merchant

A category that hides the distinction that matters operationally: some wallets present a card behind the scenes and behave like one at the counter, others are a separate rail with their own enablement, their own reporting line and their own settlement. "Do you take e-wallets" is therefore not a question with one answer, for any provider. The useful version of the question names the wallets. Apple Pay and Google Pay are the first kind — a card arriving over contactless, needing no separate enablement — while Alipay+, WeChat Pay and UnionPay QR are the second, each a separate arrangement with its own reporting. A merchant who has one of the second kind has learned nothing about whether they have the others. This is also why the answer to "we accept wallets" on a proposal is worth a follow-up: it is true of a counter that takes one of them and true of a counter that takes five, and the gap between those two is most of what a customer at the till will notice.

## Related terms

*The methods themselves*

- [PayNow](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/paynow/)
- [Dynamic PayNow](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/dynamic-paynow/)
- [Static PayNow](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/static-paynow/)
- [SGQR](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/sgqr/)
- [Alipay+](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/alipay-plus/)
- [WeChat Pay](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/wechat-pay/)
- [UnionPay](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/unionpay/)
- [NETS](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/nets/)
- [FAST](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/fast/)

- [All 74 terms](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/)

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