Credit Card, PayPal or Cash App? How You Pay Matters

Buyers have more ways to pay for things than ever before: Apple Pay, Venmo, credit cards and dozens of other options. What you choose might matter as much as the purchase itself.

Each of the different payment methods provides various conveniences, perks and protections from fraud. Credit cards have long been the default option of choice. But higher interest rates have now raised the cost of carrying a credit-card balance.

Money-transfer apps such as Venmo and Zelle processed nearly $900 billion last year, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau expects that number to reach $1.6 trillion by 2027.

These apps and services provide easy instant payments, usually for free. The downside is that these options offer fewer protections from scams and unfulfilled orders.

“The U.S. consumer is very driven by convenience. They may not be directly driven by security,” said James Anderson, managing director at Paze, a bank-owned digital wallet.

Payment apps are among the fastest-growing sources of fraud reports and losses, according to Federal Trade Commission data. Overall fraud losses have increased more than fivefold to $1.2 trillion since 2019. Losses tied to payment apps jumped from $5 million to $47 million over the same period, according to the FTC data.

As new payment options gain acceptance, consumers should try to educate themselves how to use these methods safely, said Seth Ruden, director of global advisory at BioCatch, a fraud-detection software company.

“The channel itself is not the villain. The bad actors are the scammers, the social engineers and exploit artists,” he said.

Here’s how to weigh the security, convenience and benefits of each payment option:

Credit and debit cards

When you swipe or tap your card or authorise a card transaction online, the merchant’s bank communicates with your bank through a card network such as Mastercard or Visa to ask permission to withdraw a certain amount. Your bank then decides whether to approve the transaction based on your available funds or credit and the likelihood the transaction is fraudulent. If approved, your bank puts a hold on the funds until they are sent to the merchant’s account, usually within a business day.

Credit cards can be the most rewarding way to pay online. Card issuers use the revenue from transaction fees to fund perks for customers such as cash-back deals, travel points, access to airport lounges and fraud protection.

A credit card can be expensive if you don’t pay your balance in full, and higher interest rates have now raised the cost of carrying a credit-card balance. Paying off a $1,000 balance in 12 months at the current average annual percentage rate of 22.16% means $103 in interest, compared with $77 roughly a year ago when the average was 16.65%, according to estimates from the Federal Reserve.

Debit cards don’t offer the same rewards as credit cards since their issuers make less money from each transaction. They do come with similar fraud and payment protections as credit cards.

Federal regulations require issuers to reimburse customers for unauthorised transactions of more than $50 and allow customers to dispute charges within 30 days. Many credit cards also provide purchase protection, meaning you can ask for reimbursements directly from your issuer if something you buy is lost, damaged or inconsistent with what was advertised.

Few people make the most of their credit-card benefits, payments experts said. After finding most people don’t bother to read the fine print when they sign up for a new card, Mastercard is now notifying customers of benefits in real-time.

“If I have to read a big booklet or call a number to understand what my benefits are, I’m not doing it,” said Chiro Aikat, executive vice president of U.S. market development at Mastercard.

Digital wallets

Digital wallets such as PayPal or Apple Pay are among the safest and easiest ways to pay online. Checking out with a wallet is typically faster than paying with a credit card directly since one doesn’t have to re-enter billing information and shipping address.

All of the protections and benefits associated with the underlying card are still in effect for wallet transactions, so it is best to connect these wallets to a credit card directly to maximise your protection, said Corie Wagner, an analyst at Security.org, a safety-product review site.

If a digital wallet gives you the option to link a bank account directly, you should read the policy agreement to make sure you understand what is protected. For example, PayPal offers an extra level of purchase protection, but Apple Pay and Google Pay don’t.

Wallets also offer additional layers of security through encryption and biometric verification and many don’t share sensitive financial data such as your 16-card number with individual merchants. “Use as many authentication factors as possible” such as Face ID or personal identification numbers, Wagner said.

Peer-to-peer payment apps

Apps such as Venmo, Cash App and Zelle were designed to help people send money to friends and family, but they are now used in more settings. They move money more quickly than card payments because, instead of waiting on banks to approve the transaction, the payment is authorised once the sender hits submit. It is almost impossible to get money back once it has been sent.

These payment methods aren’t regulated as heavily as cards, so users might still be on the hook for unauthorised payments if a swindler gets control of their accounts.

“Use it to pay people you know, and trust,” said Meghan Fintland, a Zelle spokeswoman. “They’re not meant to have the credit-card security.”

Bank transfers

Businesses are increasingly offering ways to pay with your bank account directly since Automated Clearing House, or ACH, transfers are much cheaper to process than cards. This option should only be considered in exchange for a discount, payments executives said.

Consumers should be selective in sharing their bank information with merchants since wire transfers don’t have the same protection guarantees as cards.

If a business requests a direct bank transfer instead of a card payment, choosing a slower option over the newer instant methods such as Zelle might be best. ACH transfers typically take a few days to settle, giving you a few more days to try to stop the transaction before the money leaves your account.

“The slower it is, the greater likelihood is that you’ll be able to get recourse,” Ruden, at BioCatch, said.

A sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.

The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.

The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.

The debt behind the AI build-out

Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.

Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.

JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.

The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.

That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.

A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.

When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.

Inflation changes the calculation

September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.

The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.

CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.

Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.

Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.

The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.

China adds another source of pressure

Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.

Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.

The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.

That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.

A reset rather than the end of the boom

The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.

What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.

The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.

More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.

For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.

Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.

The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.

Fact box

Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026

Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent

Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent

Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent

SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent

US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually

Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion