If your focus is on thorough credit monitoring, MyFICO is the place to go. It not only has credit score monitoring from all three major bureaus in the U.S. but also has the choice of several actual FICO scores used to rate loans and mortgages. 

Its excellent credit simulators can be a big help, but the service falls short without a credit freeze button as well as a slew of ID protection services, like looking for title and address changes, data breaches and investment accounts.

Even though it falls short of the mark on ID protection services, MyFICO remains one of the most expensive services available with a price tag that’s double what others cost while providing less. Our MyFICO review will help you determine if it fits in with your lifestyle and budget.

MyFICO review: Costs and what’s covered

With its connection to Fair Isaac and Company (of FICO fame), MyFICO’s three tiers focus on credit monitoring but less so on identity protection. The $20 a month Basic plan includes Experian credit scores and reports as well as your main FICO score. As is the case with the other two subscriptions, Basic includes $1 million in insurance to cover lost funds and experts, like lawyers, accountants and consultants to get your identity back.

MyFICO’s Advanced plan adds access to scores and reports from all three credit bureaus, but only quarterly. It comes with something the others lack: 12 of the most used FICO scores. The plan also includes dark web identity monitoring and costs $30 a month. 

At the top of MyFICO’s offerings is the $40 per month Premier plan that I looked at, making it among the most expensive around. It covers all three credit agencies but scoring and reports are issued monthly. 

Unfortunately, MyFICO has neither a family plan nor an annual one. It is one of the most expensive ID protection services around, topping the cost of Norton LifeLock, Bitdefender or McAfee. Still, it lacks things like a VPN, password manager and malware protection.

The company received a desirable A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, meaning that MyFICO is seen by its customers as very reputable.

MyFICO review: How we tested

During the summer of 2022, I signed up for the MyFICO Premier plan and paid for it with my credit card. Later, Tom’s Guide reimbursed me for the cost. 

Over the next three months, I checked in with the service several times a week using a variety of systems. I dropped the service at the end.

MyFICO review: Credit scores and monitoring

The MyFICO service comes the closest to providing the actual credit worthiness scores that banks and mortgage companies use on a daily basis to approve or deny loans. Tightly focused on credit monitoring and alerts, MyFICO was the only service that provides FICO scores, not VantageScore substitutes. They show what the banks, loan companies and credit card issuers really use to determine your creditworthiness with a dozen scores available that use data from the three credit bureaus. In other words, it’s a 360-degree view of your credit data and history.

For instance, the FICO 8 score is the default because of its long use with credit card companies and those who write up car loans. There are also FICO scores aimed at mortgages and credit cards as well as four recently added FICO scores, including the increasingly popular AutoScore 10 rating for car loans. 

There’s also access to your full credit report on a monthly basis, while some of the others do this quarterly, annually or not at all. At any time, it’s easy to buy an instant report for $16 each. 

Under each score is an excellent Insights section that details the variables that play a role in the FICO scoring. It not only appraised my credit mix, length of credit history and payment history, but debt load. My favorite, though, is the Resilience score for how well I might survive bad financial times ahead. 

There’s a useful score tracker for the all-important FICO Score 8 rating to see changes over time. You can dig into each FICO score to see its changes over time too. 

The service falls short of the best by lacking the ability to track investment accounts and action at payday loan companies. All of MyFICO’s plans concentrate more on scores than what you can do with them, while Bitdefender, LifeLock and most others offer instant credit freeze options, even the top MyFICO plan does not. 

It may not warn of data breaches, but MyFICO Premier has dark web scanning for personal identifiers. However, it lacks things like monitoring data brokers and the ability to track an address for a home title change. 

MyFICO review: Insurance and services

All three MyFICO plans include $1 million of identity insurance for getting back lost money as well as fixing your life after an identity crisis. These funds can be used to pay for consultants, investigators, lawyers and accountants to get an idea of the scope of the crime and to remedy the situation. 

The plan promises to cover lost wages with no limit, unlike other ID protection services that stop at about $7,500. It can also help with travel expenses and getting new documents, like a passport or driver’s license. 

The service uses the American Bankers Insurance Company of Florida to underwrite the protection. 

MyFICO review: Notifications and alerts

In addition to putting alerts in your face on the web-based interface, MyFICO displays them in its mobile app. These items can also be sent via email for prompt action.

The notifications I did get were among the most detailed with actual facts about the incident, rather than making me go to the interface to get answers. They can overwhelm you, though. However, it falls short because there’s neither a sex offender alert nor the ability to have MyFICO monitor court records for a home title change.

Over my three month use of MyFICO, I got 32 alerts, mostly for changing bank balances, although I did adjust the threshold to a higher level. Often the same alert would be repeated for the three credit agencies reporting it. For good or bad, it alerted me when my score changed.

MyFICO review: Setup

Protecting my identity and checking my credit with MyFICO went off without a hitch. I started by picking the $39.95 Premier plan from the website.

Next, I entered my email and a password, followed by my Social Security number, date of birth and address. I paid with a credit card but could have used PayPal. The summary page showed the monthly charge increased to $43.30 with sales tax, something that some ID protection services don’t charge.

I received a summary email and then had to answer four challenge questions, including ones about mortgages, roommates, credit cards and oddly, my astrological sign. Done, the site took me to MyFICO’s Dashboard, where I immediately saw my credit scores.

Still, I needed to get and install the MyFICO: FICO Score & Reports app for my phone. Finally, the first time I used the MyFICO app I needed to add my fingerprint or a PIN as a second level of authentication. The service also has two-factor authentication.

This added a minute to the setup process for a total of less than 10 minutes. All my data that traveled on the internet and was saved on the company’s servers in encrypted form. This made a data breach less of a worry.

The company has tech support personnel on call from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. PT Monday through Friday as well as 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays; they’re closed on Sundays. If you have an identity crisis, they’re available 24/7. The browser interface has a direct link to the support technicians as well as a way to send them a quick email.

MyFICO review: Interface and utilities

The MyFICO web-based interface and mobile app combine and were quick to accept my log-in credentials in under 3 seconds, making it one of the most responsive.

Setting the browser to 50% provides a comfortable HD workspace that requires a little scrolling. At 33% every item is visible, but the type is too small to read. There are four tabs at the top of the Member Center: Scores (for credit ratings and advice), Alerts (recent notices), Reports (the monthly credit summaries) and Simulator (for an excellent array of credit calculators).

The Scores are shown in the expected partially filled circles with the actual rating in the center and any recent changes in a box to the left. It’s important to note that the actual FICO score being used is in the upper left. The default is FICO 8 but there are many others that use data from any of the three credit agencies for maximum flexibility. The Reports section has the full credit report’s contents, including three months of payment history for each major creditor. A level down is a two-year timeline of payments.

MyFICO’s Simulator really shines. Access to not only the credit scores but the mathematical algorithms behind them really gives MyFICO an advantage with its what-if simulator. Just move the top slider to decrease or increase monthly payments or the bottom one to set the payment period. The estimated scores for each agency show up above.

There’s also a drop-down menu in the interface’s upper right that shouldn’t be overlooked. It has links for disputing errors on reports, getting help if your wallet is lost or stolen and a link for getting an identity theft case started. The Education service is a gem and central to MyFICO’s mission. While others treat this as an add-on that few will use, it’s at the heart of MyFICO. They come out every week or two and the latest concerned managing credit card debt in an inflationary environment.

The MyFICO service has two-factor authentication (it calls it “2-step verification”) that sends a code to your phone for log-ins. It took less than a minute to set it up.

As good as MyFICO is at credit monitoring and providing scores, it falls short in basic security. Unlike Bitdefender, McAfee, LifeLock and others, it does without three essentials of modern online life: a VPN, malware protection or browser extensions.

My three credit scores showed up immediately with the ability to change to different FICO ratings below. Further down are all the other items that the web interface offered, including the Insights section as well as tabs leading to other parts of the service.

MyFICO review: Cancellation

In addition to calling and emailing to cancel a MyFICO subscription, it can be done through the company’s website. After logging in, I went to the Subscriptions & Billing page and at the bottom and clicked on “Cancel Subscription, but that was only the beginning. After I read about the virtues of MyFICO’s protection, I had to click on “Continue to Cancel Next Step” and then again after the site offered to pause the coverage. 

Finally, I was able to click on “Cancel my Subscription”. I was told it would take effect on the next billing day. It took an hour to get a confirmation email.

MyFICO review: Verdict

Built around credit scores and reports, the MyFICO Premier plan is an expensive way for those who care about keeping an eye on credit card and bank fraud to feel safe. It does without things like investment account and home-title theft and lacks security basics such as malware protection and a VPN. However, it excels with excellent simulators and articles. 

Finally, there’s one big reason to choose MyFICO: it is the only major ID protection service whose reports use actual FICO scores, and for me that’s worth a lot. 

Apple and Google's slow expansion of the ability to put digital IDs like driver's licenses has added another state in California. 

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom's office announced that both Apple and Google will be bringing support for California driver's licenses and state IDs to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.

“We’re partnering with two iconic California companies - Apple and Google - to provide convenient, private and secure driver’s licenses and ID cards directly on people’s phones. This is a big step in our efforts to better serve all Californians, meeting people where they’re at and with technology people use every day," Newsom said in a press release.

The ability to add IDs to your phone is a part of a mobile Driver's License (mDL) pilot that California launched last year. 

The California release made sure to note that you will need to carry a physical card, most likely for traffic stops. However, they say that it is meant to speed up age verification and getting through checkpoints like those at airports or for various participating businesses.

California's mDL pilot introduced an app built by the California government which allowed Californian residents the ability to upload their IDs to their phones. 

Across the country, there have been different approaches to digital IDs. Arizona was the first to allow driver's license in Apple Wallet in 2022. Currently, you can put your IDs in the Apple Wallet in Arizona, Maryland, Colorado, Georgia, and Ohio.

Both Google and Apple started working on the ability to hold IDs in their Wallet apps in 2022. Apple's version launched with iOS 15, while the Google Wallet launched in beta in December of that year.

“We’re excited to be working with the state of California to bring IDs in Apple Wallet to Apple’s home state soon, and provide residents with an easy, secure, and private way to present their California driver’s license and state ID in person and in app using Apple Wallet,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet said in a statement.

Other states have tried the state-owned app like Florida which recently shuttered their app due to an unexplained issue.

As of this writing, California's press release says that Google Wallet is getting the ability to California IDs. A Google spokesperson tells Tom's Guide that the feature is coming to Google Wallet and the company will announce more in the future.

More from Tom's Guide

• Google Wallet is getting the biggest upgrade in years — meet the 'Everything else' pass
• iOS 18 Wallet: 3 big changes coming to your iPhone
• The EU will force Apple to offer alternatives to Apple Pay on iPhone — what you need to know

Cash App Taxes is Credit Karma Tax reincarnate. Now in its second year as part of Cash App, Cash App Taxes gets a few new features, it looks and feels largely the same as compared with previous years. It remains free, and a contender for best tax software. However, it still falls short of paid competitors, some of which charge nominal fees to get a greater breadth of support.

Last tax season, Cash App Taxes was too new to the Cash App (owned by Block) family to reflect integration with Cash App or Block’s Square services. That changes this year, with Cash App integrations for crypto transactions and receiving refunds, as well as direct W-2 imports from Square Payroll. The service still has its long-time minimalist, mobile-friendly design — plus now, you can use Cash App itself to do your taxes on your phone. Read the rest of our Cash App Taxes review to see if this free service is enough, or if it’s worth paying a little extra for more assistance.

Editor’s note: This is a review of Cash App Taxes 2022, which covers the 2022 tax filing year.

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: Cost

Cash App Taxes is free to use, and free to file most any federal return. Not every scenario is covered (for example, the service targets single-state residency returns and lacks support for several scenarios), but it is completely free.

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: State filing

As with your federal return, state tax e-file is free for one state with Cash App Taxes, but the service doesn’t support multiple states, and it doesn’t support part-year or non resident state returns. State filing is available in 40 states plus Washington, D.C. You can only file a state return with Cash App Taxes if you file the federal return with the service. Most competitors charge between $35 and $60 per state at the Deluxe or higher tiers.

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: Features

No upgrades, no upsells, no hidden costs here. Even gig workers with Schedule C deductions and self-employed or freelance income can file without paying extra. So too can S-corporations and partnerships. And crypto investors. However, the service can't handle estates and trusts, and it can't handle part-year or nonresident state returns (but it can handle multiple W-2s).

When you’re done with your return, you can export a PDF copy of your taxes for your offline records.

Cash App integration remains minimal, but is a bit stronger now . You can have your refund redeposited into your Cash App account, without requiring a Cash Card first. And if you use Cash App for your crypto transactions, you can use Cash App’s partnership with TaxBit to generate the necessary tax documents (more on that later).

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: Available help

Cash App Taxes still lacks the detailed original tax code content of its competitors. Click the ? and the help pane comes out, with a separate tab on top for chat.  Cash App lacks phone support. The chat support runs from 9 a.m to 10 p.m. CST. Help is via a form on Cash App’s support page. With no upgrades available, that means no upsells — and also no avenue for help from tax experts, as found in the four paid services and one competing free service in our best tax software buying guide. 

Cash App Taxes’ help interface remains a fractured affair. The help offered via the pop-up pane at right remains basic. When you click on help within the service, you get a pop-up box that has to be dismissed to resume working on the page. Many entries refer to IRS documents, and lack depth. In another example, a search for crypto yielded instructions on how to enter the data, but those instructions disappear as soon as you follow the link — which is actually for the Cash App on your phone, not on your computer.

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: Ease of use

One year on, and all mention of Credit Karma Tax is gone. Not surprising, though it’s possible someone might return this year. The visual interface is largely the same as before, with some subtle wording tweaks. 

If you’re a returning user, Cash App Taxes now recognizes you from last tax season, and it jumpstarts the process of filling out data for 2022. It even keeps some of the selected on-boarding settings, but it wasn’t always clear where to go if your situation changed and this meant you might see options in the tax dashboard for forms that are no longer relevant.

Logging in on a computer is a two-step approach. Go to Cash.App/taxes on your computer, then it prompts you to log in to the Cash App on your phone. Once you’re verified on the phone, the web page on your computer jumps into the Cash App Taxes onboarding screens. If you don’t already have a Cash App account, you don’t need to add a debit card in order to use Cash App Taxes. That said, the need for a Cash App account by default means that you have to have an iOS or Android phone with Cash App installed in order to use Cash App Taxes.

Cash App Taxes’ sign in was much smoother than last year, which required a QR code. 

If you’re new, you get three intake screens asking about your tax filing situation. In my case, as a returning user, the service had information already populated, and asked me to update my tax filing situation.

From there, it was straight to the dashboard. Everything runs down the center of the screen; at top sits a question mark for pulling up a help pane, and three dots for a menu with few options (including a link to the support center page, and a link to share the app with your friends). The initial intake screen asked for filing status, dependents, whether you received advance Child Tax Credit payments, and where. If you worked in more than one state, Cash App notifies you immediately that you can only use the service to file a federal return. And you can’t use the service if you made more than $600 in foreign income.

The next screen asks about your types of income, including self-employed and investment income, rental properties, and more. Finally, it asks some very clear questions around your personal expenses, medical expenses, and other expenses.

Cash App Taxes’ interface is built around a tax home page dashboard, with a center-weighted design and separate card-style modules that work well whether on a desktop or in a mobile environment. The interface’s design is responsive and minimalist, and well-suited for use on touchscreens, with finger-friendly, oblong buttons and differentiated text that is easy to read.

You’ll start the tax return process by reviewing the terms of service and authorizing Cash App Taxes to share information with parent company Block. Want to opt out? A tick box at the lower vaguely says Change Sync Settings; once there, you’ll find a way to skip sharing info and jump straight into the personal info screens of the return. The wording here could be clearer and more transparent. (As a returning user, this time the service didn’t prompt me to authorize Cash App Taxes to share my info with the government).

For new users, the service continues to offer a simple onboarding, in which you fill in the standard personal information fields: Name, birthday, address, phone number, social security number (required to proceed further). This information auto-populated from my Cash App account. basic info is confirmed, you can unlock the other modules and enter data in any order you wish.

From here, the overall interface is largely the same as last year. Along the top, Cash App Taxes groups data entry by five core tabs that are much more clear than previous versions: Info, Income, Expense, State and Review. These tabs merely jump to those sections lower in the page, but they provide at-a-glance clarity.

Cash App Taxes populates the cards representing various tax return topics based on what information you shared during the first three intake pages. A search bar at the bottom lets you look for something specific, and go back to cards you didn’t select to re-evaluate and it to your return. When you finish entering data in a given card, you return to the main dashboard, and you’ll see your progress towards refund for federal or state at the top of the screen. Some cards have the option of single-page or multi-page view, where the former puts all of the fields for that card on what page.

Some aspects of the interface remain woefully dated. For example, when entering a business description, Cash App Taxes still lacks numerous business category options in the drop-down, and the drop-down is the only way to complete the field. “Writer” became “Publishing Industries (except Internet)” — an oddity in the year 2023.

The super-simple, minimalist interface is helpful in some ways, and frustrating in others — same as in the previous iteration. For example, entering Schedule C business expenses is buried under business income, and is accessible through multiple clicks (with no single-page view). You can add aggregate expenses to a Schedule C form, although other expenses still require a lot of manual input.

There are three ways to enter investments, including cryptocurrency. But even though you can enter data in spreadsheet style, you can’t import from a spreadsheet. You can also choose to enter a summary of transactions, to simplify data entry. 

New this year is the ability to import data via TaxBit, but that process is convoluted. If you search under Cash App Taxes, you find more info about crypto than last year, but the instructions and implementation are convoluted, at best. For example, to find your Cash App 1099-B Form for Bitcoin or Stocks, you need to go to Cash App and find the forms by tapping your profile photo and then Documents. And the forms generated through TaxBit are only for Cash App transactions. 

Bottom line: Expect little automation of any tasks within Cash App Taxes. The one exception: the ability to import a W-2 via photo (including automation of importing W-2s from Square Payroll).

One nice part of Cash App Taxes: Even though its design shields you from the actual tax forms themselves, you can view your tax return forms at any time during the process. The services from H&R Block and TurboTax don’t let you see the forms until after your return is submitted.

Cash App Taxes 2022 review: Verdict

Cash App Taxes is a reasonable free option for filing federal and state taxes. Its lack of finesse may not matter to you if you’re enticed by the word free. It can handle a surprising variety of tax situations, but when you run into tax questions, you’ll pay with your time to find answers elsewhere. And if you’re not a Cash App user, this service is less attractive since it requires a Cash App account. 

If you’re likely to need assistance, or would like a tax pro to go over your documents, both H&R Block Deluxe and TurboTax Deluxe are better, if more expensive options. We also prefer their more intuitive menus. If free is your main criteria, FreeTaxUSA may provide a more full-featured experience with more options.

FreeTaxUSA is blunt about its primary attribute: This tax filing service is free for federal e-file, even for more complicated taxes like those who are self-employed. FreeTaxUSA 2022 Edition has some add-on charges, including for state filing, but as far as a free tax service goes, FreeTaxUSA offers far more than most competitors. Only Cash App Taxes might be an alternative to FreeTaxUSA, and even then, FreeTaxUSA has the advantage of having some level of both chat and phone support–and it can handle mutli-state returns.

Utah-based TaxHawk runs FreeTaxUSA, as well as an identical-looking web tax service under the TaxHawk moniker. While the underlying software is identical, and both share the same fee structures, clearly a name like FreeTaxUSA encapsulates the service’s aesthetic. Nothing fancy here. No onboarding questions, minimalist design, little help or guidance. Even the investment support is slim (you have to manually enter transaction information). But if you’re looking to save some money and don’t need a lot of hand-holding, FreeTaxUSA can get the job done. Among the best tax software, FreeTaxUSA is the best option if you don’t want to pay for the service.

Editor’s note: This is a review of FreeTaxUSA 2022, which covers the 2022 tax filing year.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: Cost

All three tiers — Basic, Premium and Self-Employed — are free for federal e-file.  That’s it. What’s jarring is that the service lists tiers at all. Clearly, FreeTaxUSA does so as a marketing play to show how its free products stack up to competing services’ offerings. 

Unlike Cash App Taxes, FreeTaxUSA has step-up pricing that adds additional features and support levels. 

The Deluxe package at $7.99 gets you Priority Support to jump to the head of the chat queue for information on how to use the service, and for basic tax information (but not tax assistance). Deluxe includes unlimited amended returns and audit assistance should you need it. Unlimited amended returns are an extra $14.99 otherwise, making the Deluxe add-on a reasonable jump, even with the $1 price increase. A new Pro Support tier costs $49.99 to add live tax pro help with screen sharing and all features of Deluxe to the free version.

Other uncommon extras: $15.99 for a professionally bound tax return. You can also prepare prior year federal returns for free, or pay $17.99 for prior year State returns. If you want Audit Defense, that’s an extra $19.99 regardless of which package you have; a third-party (unnamed) handles the defense for FreeTaxUSA.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: State filing

Like other services, FreeTaxUSA charges to file a state return (only Cash App is free to file a state return). Unlike competitors, FreeTaxUSA’s price is a bargain, just $14.99. FreeTaxUSA supports non-resident returns, so if you have a multi-state tax situation, you’re covered.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: Features

Unlike other tax software with stated tiers of service, it doesn’t matter the amount you spend — aside from the service and live help features. Your federal return is free at FreeTaxUSA.

You get a wide variety of forms as part of the service, supporting typical scenarios that will be faced by families, individuals, students, investors, sole proprietors and small businesses. Deluxe customers who spend the $7.99 extra also get unlimited amendments to returns.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: Available help

FreeTaxUSA’s online help is very basic, almost crude, in its design. For example, click on the Help with this Page or Deduction Dictionary links in the right-hand support pane, and you’ll get a pop-up of basic HTML hyperlink lists of supporting definitions. The content lacks the depth and original reporting of competing services, like TurboTax. For example, the service has minimal resources explaining the Child Tax Credit.

Last year, live chat assistance was available to everyone. Now, it’s an upgrade that requires signing up for the Deluxe tier. You can access live chat from the Support Center only by clicking a button that says Live Chat. The chat window is an overlay at right, and you can’t navigate back to another screen while that overlay is active. In the standard form, the help pane is underutilized, with too much unused prime real estate. At least the search tool at the top of the site does search for relevant help entries. And, the site does have several entries discussing cryptocurrency investments.

If you pay the $7.99 for the Deluxe package, you get to go to the head of the chat queue and get additional hours, Monday to Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET (the chat window conflicts with information elsewhere on the site, saying chat is available 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. MT Monday to Friday). 

Plus, you need to be at the Deluxe level to sign up for  the $49.99 “Pro Support,” which gives access to chat, screen sharing and phone calls with tax pros (CPAs and EAs).That’s more than twice its price last year, but it’s far less than the costs of adding live help at competitors like TurboTax. And, with this service tier, you can file unlimited amended returns, in the event you need to correct something down the road.  Last year, Pro Support was new, with limited information and availability. Now, you can easily access the service via a link under the Support options on every page.

If you pay the $6.99 for the Deluxe package, you get to go to the head of the chat queue and get additional hours, Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET. Plus, you’ll need to be at the Deluxe level to sign up for this year’s new “Pro Support,” which gives access to chat, screen sharing and phone calls with tax pros (CPAs and EAs).

FreeTaxUSA’s website lacked details about this feature when we tested the service, but according to a support chat only a “limited number” of customers will be able to upgrade. The service’s bargain price of $17.99 sounds good — maybe even too good — if you can get it, but the lack of information makes it impossible to draw any conclusions. We found one reference to this in the help, but never saw any mention of it beyond being told about it by a chat representative.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: Ease of use

Even though FreeTaxUSA lists multiple products by name under its menus, ultimately each gives you just one button — Start Free Return — to get going, and all lead to the same underlying service. Setting up an account is mostly standard fare, where you enter name, email address, username and password, then get an account verification code sent to your phone. The username part deviates from the norm, though, due to the company’s guidelines which don’t let you use your name or email as a username. The service is simple and straightforward, best for users who know what they’re doing. Presumably since FreeTaxUSA is free at all tiers, it lacks on-boarding questions of competitors like TurboTax and H&R Block.

Once we entered our account, it was clear that this is a no-frills service, from a visual perspective. The screen’s layout is about as old-school as it gets, with the biggest variances being bold text and text size, but so much being … text. Even the color scheme is minimal, with a white center main panel to work in, a slightly gray surrounding, the occasional graphic and colored button, and menu tabs (so it’s clear which section you’re in). The page has responsive design, and is more visually appealing on mobile web, which is the only way to use the service on mobile since it lacks a dedicated app.

Along the top of the page are seven drop-down menus for navigating the different components of the return, but you can’t move among different areas of the return until you’ve filled out the screens in the order prescribed. This can get annoying if you’re trying to test out the product before committing your info, or trying to fill in what you have without having all of your documents on hand.

As a new person, to begin our 2022 tax return, we clicked on the option to import 2021 tax returns. We liked that, up front, FreeTaxUSA gave an option to file an extension, too. Many other services don’t list or offer extensions at all, or wait until it’s closer to the tax deadline to let you file an extension.

FreeTaxUSA lets you import PDF files from TurboTax, H&R Block Online, H&R Block Tax Software (self-prepared) — their wording, not what we see at H&R Block — and TaxAct. Anything else and you have to start from scratch.

We then entered personal information, including taxpayer specifics, filing status, and dependents. At this screen, FreeTaxUSA prompted for information related to the Child Tax Credit payments from 2022, although there is minimal help info surrounding what this all means.

As a returning user, much of the information above was populated already, and all we had to do was walk through the personal information to confirm the information already carried over from last year remains accurate. 

In the summary screen you can add your IRS Identity Protection PIN, if you have one, and add an additional phone number to your account with FreeTaxUSA.

The next prompts are for income. Everything has to be entered manually; there’s no way to take a photo and have the info imported into the FreeTaxUSA system. Same for interest income and 1099 income, which can get tiresome fast if you have lots of accounts or clients.

While there is no clear reference in the main income screen to cryptocurrency, FreeTaxUSA does have some help topics available, and the service reminds you after the main income entry screen to include cryptocurrency on your tax return. But that’s the extent of crypto guidance.

Elsewhere on the site, FreeTaxUSA guides you to use a crypto tax service to prepare a Form 8949, which you can then enter as a summary for your total long-term sales and short-term sales in the service, and then send your form separately to the IRS. Or, you can enter each row of crypto sales as a separate sale. 

After income, this year you get an upsell splash screen to the $49.99 Pro service. A simple click moves you along if you’re not interested.

For all entries, you can download a PDF preview of the actual form, but this preview is watermarked and can’t be used for the IRS. Also, all pages have three navigation elements in the upper right corner: bookmark, history and topic list, each of which is a pop-up on the page. As with everything about FreeTaxUSA’s interface, the presentation is very OG web design, with basic HTML links and zero visual presentation. The topic list is the best way to navigate among what you’ve already done, even though the drop-down menus do show surprising detail, too.

The deductions screens seem straightforward, and walk through many common, and uncommon, scenarios. Then you get to Miscellaneous Forms and Topics, for additional information, and finally a summary to review everything before moving on to your state taxes.

FreeTaxUSA has a certain simplicity about it, but it’s too simplified to the point of being annoying. Jumping around gets frustrating, and explanations lack the detail and guidance of competitors. If you need help with something in the free version, you have to first go to the support screen to get the chat overlay; and you can’t go back to where you were having problems while on the chat.

FreeTaxUSA 2022 review: Verdict

FreeTaxUSA 2022 Edition is free, and fairly comprehensive in what it covers. The simplified interface lacks the visual distinctions and details of competing products, including the free Cash App Taxes. And it lacks any photo imports, again something that Cash App Taxes has.

However FreeTaxUSA might be worth a look if you know you don't need much hand-holding with your taxes, and don’t mind the barebones interface. Intuit’s TurboTax Deluxe 2022 costs more, but we like it for its friendly interface and more robust data import tools and its direct handling of cryptocurrency and investment transactions.

TaxAct Deluxe continues to offer one of the most comprehensive tax filing services we’ve seen, and remains a top contender for best tax software. Last year the service introduced free live assistance from tax experts at all tiers; this year, the Xpert Assist feature is only free until 3/20 (pricing after that wasn’t posted at this writing).

TaxAct with Xpert Assist is a competitive value considering that kind of assistance costs extra elsewhere. But TaxAct remains a step or three behind industry behemoth TurboTax. It discontinued its support for a full service tax pro completing your return (that feature was only introduced last year), and it is noticeably behind in cryptocurrency guidance (it now has a section for manually adding transactions or importing a .CSV file in TaxAct Premier). 

TaxAct delivers its services at reasonable prices, and with a flowing, facile interface. The service’s design has less hand-holding and guidance than competing products, and caters to those who know what forms they need to complete their taxes. 

Editor’s note: This review is of TaxAct Deluxe 2023, which covers the 2022 tax filing year. 

TaxAct Deluxe review: Cost

TaxAct covers the widest swath of specific tax-filing situations with its web- and download-based options. Many of these situations — such as support for tax-exempt organizations, trusts, and estates and business options like partnership, C-corporation and S-corporation — are not addressed by either TurboTax or H&R Block. (TurboTax supports some of these through its new small business live product, and H&R Block’s Block Advisor’s product supports these business options, but only when filing with a tax pro through an in-person experience.) TaxAct markets bundles for individual and business tax filing, with up-front pricing that encompasses both situations plus the relevant state tax filing. The variety of options makes TaxAct the best do-it-yourself tax service for businesses or self-employed.

We laud TaxAct’s variety of options, but here will focus on the four core products in its online Federal portfolio. You have to pay for state returns separately.

The primary step-ups from TaxAct's free version have always closely followed the industry standards used by TurboTax and H&R Block, but at lower prices. This year, those prices continue to be lower than either of the behemoths: TaxAct Free, Deluxe ($46.95), Premier ($69.95), and TaxAct Self-Employed ($94.95). 

As noted in the intro, Xpert Assist remains free across all tiers, but only until March 20. (Pricing thereafter is not published at this writing.).  This service provides live answers from CPAs and other tax experts via phone and screen-share. The inclusion of Xpert Assist across all tiers is a big differentiator for Tax Act, but if you start your taxes later in the game, you might end up paying mightily.

All four of the aforementioned tiers are also available for download, but these prices went up  year-over-year  ($44.95  plus state return, and  $139.95, $149.95, and $159.95, respectively including one state return).

TaxAct distinguishes itself by having TaxAct Estates & Trusts (Form 1041) ($124.95 online and download) for handling filing a return for an estate or trust. And it has TaxAct 2021 Tax-Exempt Organizations ($124.95 download) for those who run an organization subject to sections 501(a), 527 and 4947(a)(1).

In addition to these products, TaxAct has another four business-specific options: built around whether you have a Sole Proprietor (Form 1040C, Schedule C) ($94.95), Partnership (Form 1065) ($124.95), a C Corporation (Form 1120) or an S Corporation (Form 1120S) ($124.95). Each of these options has a downloadable version at a premium ($159.95 for the Sole Proprietor, $199.95 for the rest). TaxAct also offers business filers the chance to get bundles that include individual and business forms.

Audit defense through partner ProtectionPlus costs an extra $49.95 (up $5 from last year).

TaxAct Deluxe review: State filing

TaxAct Deluxe charges extra for state returns. State tax filing costs $39.95 with the free TaxAct service, and $54.95 (a $10 increase) per state on the other tiers of service, unless you're buying one of the home and business bundles or you've downloaded TaxAct. One state e-file per form is included free in bundled scenarios.

TaxAct Deluxe review: Features

As with other tax software, the amount you spend for TaxAct will determine the features and IRS forms support you get. For example, the free product includes access to multiple tax forms, including unemployment income and retirement income (not typically offered by other free products) and will handle the  Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credits. But TaxAct's free version lacks basic interest income and student loan interest, both of which come with TurboTax's free product.

As you step up through the available tiers, you will gain access to additional tax forms; this is where having the expertise to know which forms you need helps (view the comparison chart). The Deluxe version adds a litany of additional forms, including adoption credits, student loans, and Health Savings Account, plus support for Schedule A itemized real-estate taxes and mortgage deductions, and Schedule SE self-employment taxes. Premier adds support for investments and cryptocurrency, sale of home, and K-1 income, while Self-Employed is required for supporting freelance and business income, and a Sole Proprietor version targets single-person business.

TaxAct Deluxe review: Available help

Xpert Assist lets you schedule a call back (only available in some states) or talk live to CPAs and other tax experts and get your tax questions answered for free. The service also supports screen sharing, but not live chat. Hours of operation are more limited than at TurboTax; this service – and technical support – is available from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. CT weekdays, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends (and later during peak tax season in mid-April).

TaxAct provides online support in the form of searchable resources on tax terms and guidance for filing your return. The interface is primitive, HTML; in other words, functional but not visually engaging.

Throughout the service’s interface, you get options for guided data entry; pop-up info boxes to explain specific entry points; and a searchable Help Center pane with links to resources and explanations on TaxAct's website (including tax calculators, and Tax Information hub that provides checklists, law changes, and other resources). That said, guidance and information on newer initiatives like the Child Tax Credit and crypto currency is thin, or non-existent.

TaxAct Deluxe review: Ease of use

Getting started with TaxAct is easy: Pick a product and sign up by entering your email address, waiting for an account verification code to be sent to you, and choosing your username and password. If you are a returning customer after a large gap, the service uses both phone and email to send verification codes. TaxAct lacks the detailed on-boarding questions of competitors like TurboTax.

Once signed in, we clicked the green get started button, and chose the Deluxe tier from the standard product page (or, you can start this way as a new customer).  Next we were given the option of importing info from an existing return (which we skipped here) or starting from scratch with filling in basic info. The interface is largely the same as last year, with a few tweaks to the flow and guided data entry. The help pane stays in place along the right, with an Xpert Assist button on the top nav.

We found TaxAct's unfettered interface clear and its direct language appealing. The site is responsively designed to work on mobile and desktop, with a left-hand navigation pane and a main central screen that uses fonts and graphics to make the pages compelling and easy to read. TaxAct also has dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android.

We could easily follow the prescribed order of topics for completing the Federal return, or choose to jump around by picking something different from the left navigation pane. Within each section, tabs along the top of the screen let you maneuver among the options for that section.

After completing basic information about yourself (personal information, relationship status, dependents, and residency address), you can move into the federal return.

This section is streamlined at the start, to get right to the meat of the matter creating your federal return. If you're unsure what something refers to or what to select, simply click on the information icon to the right of each entry. You'll get a pop-up overlay describing what the field requires.

The structure for entering federal return data is similar, with an option to choose step-by-step guidance that walks you through questions about income, investments, expenses, education expenses, and housing. TaxAct uses this info to find savings, but the company also asks for permission to share your return details with sister company TaxSmart Research LLC to get customized tax tips (you can opt out).

Next you’ll enter your income data. Once you know what you need to enter, you can either import the data manually using guided fields to input data, or you can import electronically from a support institution (info which is more buried and less visual this year as compared with last year).

We could next move through the many fields to fill out via the screen prompts, or navigate via the left navigation pane to move through the process of completing our taxes, navigating each section of the Federal form in sequence: Income, Deductions, Credits, Taxes, Miscellaneous, and then see a summary at the end. Each section was clearly presented and business-like in its approach. When we chose a form not supported by the Deluxe version we tested, TaxAct simply prompted us to upgrade. 

That happened when we searched for crypto, too. However, in that example, we searched in the help pane for crypto, and selected the option for the service to jump us to the correct screen for crypto transactions; when we selected an option, we next got the upgrade path to Premier. 

Ultimately, while we appreciated multiple ways of entering data, the more we moved around, the more we found the navigation got counter-intuitive (wait, how to get back to step-by-step guidance?) and extraneous (what purpose does the bookmark serve since you can’t see a list of sections bookmarked?).

Another annoyance: TaxAct looks for ways to upsell you, and the service intersperses such ad screens into the experience as you navigate through the product.

TaxAct Deluxe review: Verdict

With a wide swath of online products, clean presentation, and the addition of free interactive support with live tax professionals and a less expensive full service option, TaxAct Deluxe impresses across the board — whether your tax needs are simple, or complex. 

If you need guidance in handling cryptocurrency transactions, you won’t find it here — for that, we recommend TurboTax Deluxe. But for most needs, TaxAct offers the best mix of value and assistance among this year’s tax contenders, without going with a free product like Cash App Taxes (formerly Credit Karma Tax) or FreeTaxUSA. 

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 is the best tax software for those who want to save money on their taxes while retaining some of the conveniences of more pricey packages. Apart from the entirely free Cash App Taxes and FreeTaxUSA, TaxSlayer remains the least expensive way to file a federal return across a wide variety of tax situations, including for investments and self-employed.

While pricing and support structure remain the big differentiators for TaxSlayer, the service’s friendly interface and clear guidance also stand out. And it is the only service beyond FreeTaxUSA that allows you to do three years of back taxes online in addition to the current year. Sure, TaxSlayer Classic doesn’t provide as much hand-holding as you get with pricier competitors such as H&R Block and TurboTax, but it gets the job done without sacrificing features like importing some W-2 documents by photo.

Editor’s note: This review is of TaxSlayer Classic 2023, which covers the 2022 tax filing year.

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: Cost

TaxSlayer has four tiers of service in its online Federal portfolio. The structure of the services is slightly different from competing tax-preparation software. 

Simply Free is just that, and it handles W-2 and education deductions and credits, but it doesn't include Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, as it does on TurboTax, for example. The $29.95 Classic tier handles most tax situations, while Premium ($49.95) adds priority phone and email support and Ask a Tax Pro expert assistance. The $59.95 Self-Employed tier is best for those who contract, freelance or have a side hustle (technically, the necessary tax forms are in the Classic version, but you need to go to Self-Employed to get tax expert help), and it adds support for IRS audit assistance for three years and live chat and help from a tax pro.

If you have investments and don’t need help, TaxSlayer Classic should suffice. And if you have Schedule C deductions and income from a small business or side-hustle, the self-employed tier is the most reasonable among all the paid services. 

In its site menu, TaxSlayer lists out a dedicated Military tier, which allows active service members to do their Federal return for nothing (by contrast, TurboTax does the same, but uses its onboarding questions to create a military-appropriate experience).

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: State filing

State tax filing is included with the free version. State filing costs $39.95, up $3 from last year, for the other tiers of service. That’s still $15 cheaper than TurboTax. Military members file for free, same as with TurboTax.

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: Features

TaxSlayer has never been big on fancy features. Instead, its interface and navigational flow continues to improve, even if the guided navigation still has a few hiccups. There aren’t any significant changes this year for the Classic version. Last year the service gained CSV file imports for investment transactions; before that, it was using a photo to populate W-2 data fields).

TaxSlayer continues to tweak its Quick File experience, which provides a streamlined process by letting you jump directly to specific forms you know you need. When you step up through the paid tiers, you gain additional features, most of which are related to support (which we’ll discuss next).

The Premium and Self-Employed tiers bump the IRS Audit Assistance to three years. The Self-Employed tier also gains additional relevant guidance for 1099 income and extra in-service help to maximize work expense deductions. And you get a guide to self-employment, quarterly estimated tax payment reminders and year-round tax and income tips.

The Simply Free version of TaxSlayer covers fewer tax situations than competitors, but it does include free phone and email support.

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: Available help

The Support Center front page is slightly improved, and the cohesive presentation goes deeper than just the surface. Classic users can get help by email or non-toll-free phone, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Whether accessing help from inside the service or via the Support Center, the content lacks the depth and detail of some competitors. A crypto entry refers to “virtual currency” and links to an IRS document, instead of explaining things clearly within TaxSlayer. 

Overall, the look is similar to last year’s help design, with fly-out panels on the right that collapse away if not needed. The answers at right, when clicked, sometimes appear in a fly-out pane at left. We found the pane awkward to read on the left; your eye flows across the screen more naturally from left to right, and that pane seems like it would be better served as an overlay at right.

Put simply, the site’s support pages are light on guidance and help. While the Premium and Self-Employed tiers can’t fix the written support, at least with those levels you get priority phone and email support, and tax pro assistance.

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: Ease of use

Signing up for TaxSlayer Classic is a standard affair. We selected Start For Free for the Classic tier, and walked through the terms of service immediately after creating an account. Next, it shows you the different tiers, to pick which one is best for you; this is an improvement over the hard upsell to Premium the service had last year. We proceeded to work on our taxes in the Classic version. 

The first stop was to upload our prior returns (if not a returning user). If you’ve used TaxSlayer before–or you navigate to the My Account view–the service welcomes you back and shows either your prior year returns. And if you never did a return for a recent tax year, this screen will even give you a chance to start one for up to an additional three years back–the only one of the services that lets you file previous years’ returns.

Once inside the service, we found a pleasingly minimalist yet styled interface, with a black nav bar along the left side and a slide-out, context-sensitive help pane at right. Large-type headline fonts and graphics help differentiate text, with green and pale red buttons to navigate among options. The left nav bar is sometimes replaced by help articles (more on this later), an incongruent use of the space given the help pane’s locale. 

The first intake screen asks for your personal information (name, social, birthday and occupation). The second covers residency information (including part-time and non-resident status), followed by 10 (down from 12) on-boarding questions, among them whether the taxpayer served in a combat zone or was affected by a natural disaster during the current tax year. Amidst these questions, TaxSlayer slips in whether you ever “received, sold, sent, exchanged, or otherwise acquired financial interest in virtual currency during the current tax year.” That’s curiously stilted language to use for cryptocurrency, and the service lacked a learn more info panel to explain. (And when we searched crypto in the help pane, an article popped up with more information on the left.)

Then we added filing status. Rather than a “learn more” pane, this time the service offered up a Filing Status Wizard which walked us through the criteria for filing. Next up was a screen for entering dependents (though no mention here of the child tax credit). Finally, we could enter an IRS Identity Protection PIN if necessary. 

Moving into the meat of the Federal return, TaxSlayer first offers the chance to use Quick File. This improved option lets you enter the numbers or keywords for the forms you need, and then the service walks you through the data entry. 

In Quick File, prompts to ask whether you want guided navigation (where you answer questions about your tax situation), or to choose forms from a list. The guided navigation isn’t as extensive as on TurboTax or H&R Block, but it’s more than the free tax services offer. The service first walks you through the Income Guide, where the questions aim to account for all possible forms of income. You can upload a PDF of your W-2 or enter the data manually, but you can’t enter it by taking a photo of the document unless you’re on mobile. Ditto for other forms, like 1099-INT or 1099-MISC (we could enter these in the Classic version, but also got an upsell note indicating for $30 more, we could get the self-employed version, with greater support for such scenarios). Income from investments falls under this guide, including Form 1099-B. 

At all price tiers, TaxSlayer lacks strong support for investors, including those with cryptocurrency transactions. You have to import all info manually, although there is an option for uploading a .CSV file. The service is light on guidance of how to handle crypto, pointing you instead to the IRS’ own crypto form. 

Overall, we liked navigating TaxSlayer, though the interface is not without the occasional oddity. For example, the cancel button didn’t consistently take us back to the previously completed screen, but rather moved us forward to the next screen. And the guided navigation didn’t always seem consistent when we bounced among different screens.

TaxSlayer’s responsive design makes the service usable across desktop and mobile web. The service also has a dedicated mobile app. We did like the detailed menu on the left nav pane, which lets you navigate at will through different sections of the return; better still was its ability to tuck away to save screen real estate.

Beware the ongoing upsell. In fact, dismissing the ads quickly got tiresome. As noted earlier, we got an upsell when entering form 1099-MISC; in the guided deductions section, an upsell appeared for adding audit defense and identity theft monitoring for $44.

Still, at the Classic level, you get support for a wider swath of tax forms than with most competitors–including Schedule C business expenses.That alone might be worth the cost of entry and occasional hassles of TaxSlayer. 

TaxSlayer Classic 2023 review: Verdict

TaxSlayer Classic is the best tax software if you’re on a budget because it gets the job done for numerous tax situations–including self-employment–in a reasonably efficient manner. And it does so at the lowest price of any paid tax software.

However, TaxSlayer’s help guidance still lacks depth, and its interface lacks the breadth of expert support, visual design and friendly language of our best tax software pick TurboTax Deluxe. If you can spare the extra dollars, we’d suggest springing for one of its competitors, but if you’re on a budget — and don’t mind a bunch of upsells — then TaxSlayer is worth a look.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 is a perennial mainstay for the best tax software crown, and this year is no different. Now in its 39th year, the TurboTax family (which covers the 2022 tax year) has a wide swath of options for assistance from a tax expert, and it has the smoothest all-virtual full-service upgrade that lets a tax professional do the heavy lifting. However, these features cost more than they ever have. If you’re trading in investments and cryptocurrency, this tier continues to provide one of the best integrated intake processes of any of the competitors. 

The service’s user interface provides guided detailed questions in plain English, and minimizes your exposure to actual tax forms. TurboTax Live’s expert assistance remains a well-integrated experience. For 2023, TurboTax makes tweaks to its fully virtual Live Full Service, through which you can have a tax pro complete and file your taxes for you. If your tax needs are uncomplicated, TurboTax has a phenomenal free limited-time deal for those who qualify for Basic Live Assisted. 

Read the rest of our TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review (which covers the 2022 tax year) to find out what else we liked about the software.

If you purchased TurboTax from 2016 to 2018, but because of your income, were eligible to use its free offering, you may be entitled to a refund, due to a settlement between Intuit and the states' Attorneys General offices. 

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: Cost

TurboTax now offers three types of online federal tax products. At the baseline, there’s the do-it-yourself TurboTax. The step-up from that is TurboTax Live Assisted; the name now adds “Assisted,” presumably for clarity that you do get live help via video chats and tax return review with tax experts. The third line is TurboTax Live Full Service, where  you give your documents to a tax expert and they do the rest. While we considered the availability and ease of using the live components, we evaluated the standard TurboTax online product, focusing on the Deluxe tier — one of four product tiers based on your return’s complexity.

All four do-it-yourself tiers remain the same price as last year, but the Live Assisted versions went up $10 across the board and the Live Full Service versions went up dramatically. For example, the Deluxe tier Live Full Service went up by $60, while the more complex Premier and Self-Employed versions each increased by a whopping $110.
• Basic (free; $89 for Live Assisted version after March 31, 2021; $209 Full Service after March 31, 2021) *For simple tax returns only. Not all taxpayers qualify. 
• Deluxe ($59; $129 Live Assisted; $259 Full Service)
• Premier ($89; $179 Live Assisted; $369 Full Service)
• Self-Employed ($119; $209 Live Assisted; $399 Full Service). (See here for a matrix of various TurboTax options).

TurboTax Live Full Service’s prices are a more significant step up from Live Assisted (new name, same as last year’s “Live” tier), but still a fairly reasonable expense when you consider you’re getting a fully virtual service tax pro handling your taxes — and they now handle your taxes live on the call with you. If you qualify for the Basic Live Assisted Service, you can get this service free if you file before March 31. We like TurboTax’s price transparency for its Live Full Service product. Also, you can see up front what Live Full Service costs before you start; H&R Block’s interface still obscures the pricing for its full virtual tax prep option online.     

If you prefer to keep your tax data local instead of using an online service, Intuit continues to offer four varieties of download-to-own TurboTax, at the same prices as last year (Basic, $50; Deluxe, $80; Premier, $110; and Home & Business, $120). The downloadable product lets you electronically file, or you can print out and mail your return. (Live services are not an option with the downloaded versions.)

Active duty and reserve military users can file federal and state taxes for free, using a link via the website’s menu. TurboTax’s software dynamically adjusts for its military product, as opposed to having a separate “product” (as TaxAct does for its military tax service).

Small businesses get a boost with the new TurboTax Live Full Service Business Tax, which handles LLCs, S-corps and partnerships. Pricing starts at $999.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: State filing

State tax filing costs $59 per state on all standard do-it-yourself TurboTax online products, also up $10 from last year (a free state return comes with TurboTax Free online). That's pricier than H&R Block, which charges $37 per do-it-yourself state return. TurboTax Live Assisted Basic, which includes live support, includes one state filing. All other TurboTax Live Assisted and Live Full Service options cost $64 to file a state return, up $15 from last year.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: Features

TurboTax has long let you import data from financial institutions and from Intuit QuickBooks, but not its consumer-centric Mint (TurboTax desktop handles Quicken imports as well). If you’re using the Live Full Service tier, you can use TurboTax’s MyDocs cloud service, through which you can share relevant tax documents for review (you can also add your docs there to collect them in one secure place, even if not using a tax pro to do your taxes for you).

The free tier handles simple Form 1040 tax situations like the earned income tax credit, the standard deduction, the Child Tax Credit, basic interest and dividend income, and unemployment income. It also handles student loan forms. For anything more complex, you need to graduate to a higher tier.

TurboTax's Deluxe product covers charitable donations and Schedule A (real-estate taxes and mortgage) deductions, and searches for more than 350 possible tax deductions.

If you have a 1099-K from selling personal items or as a hobby, you can use Deluxe, but not if you have self-employed income. If you have a 1099-NEC form (the new independent contractor income form) or investments, you may be able to use Deluxe. But Schedules D (investments) and E (rentals and royalties) — including rental income, roboinvesting, and cryptocurrency transactions — require the Premier tier (although oddly, the Deluxe version allowed us to enter crypto transactions without prompting us to upgrade, as it did for stock investments). And if you have a business with associated deductions, that’s covered in the Self-Employed product, which now looks for over 500 possible credits and deductions and uses machine learning and AI (according to TurboTax) to uncover deductions for your industry.

TurboTax Self-Employed adds photo import for 1099-K forms (but we saw only the opportunity to import using a digital file). It also adds a handy year-round expense monitor that can simplify the tax process when the time comes, a deductions checklist, and a streamlined Schedule C intake intended to better tailor the screen prompts for your tax situation. 

Meanwhile, investments and cryptocurrency gain big support this year with additional updates to the import process. Investors get a holistic view of their portfolio with the new Investor Hub, which pulls together all investments and their related taxes. You can import up to 10,000 stock transactions directly from financial institution import partners, and the software now performs an analysis on your investments’ cost basis based on your data imports. And for cryptocurrency transactions, TurboTax supports up to 20,000 transactions, five times the last year’s number. 

TurboTax provides improved guidance on crypto investments, and it partners with more than 30crypto exchanges — up from 15, and including Coinbase, Robinhood, and Binance — to directly import cryptocurrency transactions. This is a direct import, versus using a manual process and importing a CSV file, as before. Competitors have different ways of handling crypto: H&R Block supports direct import from a limited number of exchanges; TaxAct uses Koinly; and Cash App Taxes uses TaxBit.

Charitable deductions are improved as well. Intuit’s nifty but imperfect integration of donations tracking app Its Deductible into TurboTax simplifies estimating and adding the value of goods donated to your return. Previously, you could only import data from your account on this Intuit-owned app.

New in 2023, TurboTax Live Full Service adds a “personal welcome call” to get you started, and can get your taxes done fully in one session with an expert. Also, the Live Full Service adds bi-lingual services for Spanish speakers, from start to finish. This is in addition to the full Spanish language service for the do-it-yourself and Live Assisted products as well. A simple click in the left nav bar switches the interface from English to Spanish.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: Available help

Add in about Live Help button showing how long for an expert, also note expert review, and can submit questions for response outside 

TurboTax improves available assistance for 2022 taxes, starting with a smoother experience for Live Full Assisted and Live Full Service. For the former, the live help is more targeted, and context sensitive to wherever you are in the service. For example, if you’re in the self-employed expenses or investments sections, the expert you connect to will be well-versed in that topic and ready to help you with your questions. And if you need more help, Coach mode helps you get started, letting you connect with an expert to describe your tax situation verbally and let them set up your TurboTax screens to make your view customized and easier to navigate. In Live Assisted, an expert can also now take control of your screen and navigate you to the feature you need (they can even leave to-do notes for you to follow up on).

In TurboTax Live, the process is now simplified and synchronous. Before, it was an asynchronous process: You’d connect to a tax pro assistant, who then routed you to an expert who’d handle things by going back and forth with you. Now, you are either connected immediately with an expert, or you can immediately make an appointment with an expert — and the expert does your taxes synchronously, with you on the call. 

I encountered the legacy help pop-ups less frequently than before, but they’re still there — even though most help screens activate a dedicated slide-out panel on the right side of the screen. This year, the chat head for accessing live assistance is a permanent fixture on-screen.

TurboTax’s help is the most comprehensive of any service. The content is largely well-written, original, and useful. It mines questions from other users, which might help you figure out your own situation without asking an expert.

You can get technical help using any tier of the service, and even share your screen with a support person. You can add TurboTax Live Assisted (the new name for the Live product) at any time by clicking on the Live Expert Help badge at the top right of the screen. Once you have Live Assisted, you can add Live Full Service; or you can opt for Live Full Service when you sign-up.

For Live Assisted, the support call starts by phone, and then you can initiate one-way live video or screen sharing. TurboTax Live Assisted is available year-round to ask tax pros questions. If you upgrade to Live Full Service, you get matched with a tax pro based on the complexity of your return, and you can continue with that same pro if you’d like once your return is done.

If you don’t go the Full Service route, TurboTax Live does let you have a tax pro review your return before you file.

The call starts by phone, and then you can initiate one-way live video or screen sharing. TurboTax Live is available year-round to ask tax pros questions. If you upgrade to Live Full Service, you get matched with a tax pro based on the complexity of your return, and this year going forward you will be able to interface with that same pro if you’d like.

If you don’t go the Full Service route, TurboTax Live does let you have a tax pro review your return before you file.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: Ease of use

TurboTax’s onboarding process remains similar, with updated tile selections representing aspects of your tax situation. Selecting tiles — which come up again later as questions — produces a recommendation on which product tier is appropriate. Or  you can select the product to start with directly from their product page, and upgrade along the way if you prefer. 

Onboarding continued even before I logged in, asking how I filed taxes last year; the answer will customize your experience once you log in. Prior users of TurboTax or other Intuit online products (QuickBooks, Mint) log into the service with their Intuit credentials; new customers have to create an account. The service sends a code to verify you (it sent me codes to my phone, then my email). 

As a returning user, I returned into the same product version (Live Assisted Self-Employed) I’d used last year. If your tax situation has changed and you want to use a lower tier product (for example, you went from self-employed to a W-2 employee again), it is possible to start fresh, but TurboTax doesn’t prompt for this; instead, the option to start fresh hides in the left nav bar, under tax tools. 

I liked how, from the start, TurboTax’s intake is in friendly, plain language. It first prompted me to enter any life changes in the past year. The service next showed a summary of what I could expect to deal with in my taxes, and it also gave more reading info

Finally, the service prompts you to agree to share tax info with Intuit to get personalized strategies. You can opt out if you’d prefer. That ends the onboarding process and you can finally begin working on the return itself.

TurboTax’s overall online design remains the same. The service has a left-hand navigation pane for your tax home, Documents, and top-level navigation for the different components of your tax return (personal info, Federal, State, review, and file).

You’ll start with adding personal info (name, birthday, Social Security number, occupation, residency — including if you lived somewhere part-time – and military status), dependent info, and the like. After reviewing all of the personal info, TurboTax plugged an optional $49 upgrade for its theft-monitoring and audit-defense service. Once I declined this, we finally moved into the federal return.

Throughout the process of answering questions to complete your return, TurboTax uses clear language to walk you through adding your data. If you don’t want to see what looks like a representation of a tax form, you don’t have to. This hand-holding is in stark contrast to some competitors, like FreeTaxUSA and TaxAct, who just drop you right into walking through different tax forms with minimal questions and little natural language guidance.

TurboTax allows you to navigate your federal return via four floating tabs — Income & Expenses, Deductions & Credits, Other Tax Situations, and Federal Review. You can complete these in order, or jump around as you’d like. When you reach the end, TurboTax alerts you to missing information before you file, or you can choose to have a tax pro review your return. If you are expecting a refund, you can track the status of your refund at Intuit’s Credit Karma.

Atop the screen sits the global navigation bar, with buttons for accessing notifications, search, virtual assistant help, and live tax advice. The latter leads to the upgrade for TurboTax Live Assisted, or to the TurboTax Live expert if you’ve already upgraded. TurboTax also shows an update of your federal and state refunds in the top nav, but you can hide this info.

The onboarding questions can get repetitive, even though they serve different purposes in the process. If you miss something the first time, you have to find where it is again on your own. For example, I had to click the income button to expand on other income received, and found a highly detailed reference list that jogged my memory of what else to add. At least the language on the whole is friendly and accessible. And TurboTax covers more scenarios — and it does so more clearly — than some of the competing services. For example, TurboTax calls out if you have a nontraditional situation for a dependent or made money while living in a state other than your residence, and provides appropriate guidance in the slide-out help pane at right.

The TurboTax service has responsive design, making it easy to navigate across mobile apps, mobile browser, and desktop browser. While the text size is now larger in some places, overall it could still use work to become more differentiated on all screens. Often the text remains surprisingly small, with a low font weight,on a computer screen, making it harder to read. Overall, H&R Block still does a better job with its cohesive interface design and visual presentation.

If you use the Live Assisted version, one new feature this year: Race mode. Intuit gamifies completing your tax return by letting you know how long it will take to do your taxes (based on the info you provided), and starts the clock to show your progress as you move through the return.

Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2022 review: Verdict

The experience of using TurboTax Deluxe 2021 is fundamentally the same as compared with recent years, but subtle interface tweaks, improved live and full-service support, and the software’s ongoing improvements in investment and crypto handling gives TurboTax the edge over H&R Block and other contenders as the best tax software. 

Even though it’s the most expensive of the tax prep software we tested, the steps TurboTax takes to simplify the intimidating tax process places its services ahead of the competition. 

H&R Block consistently delivers one the best tax software services, and its H&R Block Deluxe 2023 service continues this tradition. Moreover, the service has several useful updates for tax year 2022, with clear guidance on complex tax topics (including crypto) and a colorful, visual interface whose efficient design keeps tax prep from feeling overwhelming. Plus, the service integrates cogent explanations that break down tax lingo in a digestible way. H&R Block still has the cleanest and most friendly user experience we’ve seen. But what it still lacks is a seamless, all-virtual way of having a tax pro handle your taxes from start to finish.

For this H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review (which covers the 2022 tax year), we started out using the first paid tier of H&R Block’s do-it-yourself online tax prep product, and noted the upgrade paths and differentiators. Read the rest of our review to find out if this is the best tax software for you.

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: Pricing

H&R Block's federal online tax service encompasses four tiers, each with a stacking list of added features and form support. New this year is seeing H&R Block refer to the service as eFile Tax Preparation; alternately, the company’s site refers to it as its do-it-yourself product. Minor details, but details nonetheless.

The free tier includes unemployment income, an uncommon feature for this tier among its competitors. The other tiers have simplified names from last year, and all went up slightly – but not as much as with other competitors: Deluxe ($55), Premium ($75) and Self-Employed ($110). The Deluxe version adds real estate taxes and self-employed income; Premium adds support for investments, including cryptocurrency; and Self-Employed adds Schedule C deductions and asset depreciation. 

The company has a $220 small business product (up from $145) under its Block Advisors banner. This service integrates with other small business services, and includes tax pro assistance at a lower price than if you buy the Self-Employed product and add it on later. A DIY-version of business taxes starts at $85. A separate product for expat U.S. citizens starts at $99 (or $199 with a tax advisor). 

This year, Online Assist is broken out as its own product line, such that you can sign up for H&R Block’s tax expert help from the get-go. Online Assist adds unlimited screen share and on-demand chat and video assistance. Pricing starts at $70 for the Basic version, and scales from there (but that’s not published). You can start with Online Assist, or add it as an upgrade from within the product.

If you choose to file with a tax pro, that path leads you to a different product page and onboarding process, one that’s tied to making an appointment with an H&R Block tax pro. Pricing starts at $85, but beyond that tagline, you don’t see detail up front about how much the service may cost you given your specific tax situation.

If you prefer to keep your data locally and out of the cloud, H&R Block has four Mac/PC downloads as well, starting at $29.95 for the Basic version and scaling up to $79.95 for Premium & Business (appropriate for small business owners).

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: State filing

Except for H&R Block's Free Online version, which includes a state tax return at no cost, other H&R Block online versions require an additional $37 per state. State e-filing is included in all online versions. As always, you move onto the state return only after completing a federal return; the service will auto-populate relevant information accordingly.

The Deluxe+State, Premium, and Premium & Business download versions all include the software for one state form, but bizarrely charge $19.95 to e-file (except in N.Y.). Additional state programs cost $39.95 each. For Basic, it costs $39.95 for the state return, or $19.95 to e-file. (Note: This is the only place on H&R Block’s tax site that shows dollars and cents; all prices are otherwise already rounded off, a welcome change).

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: Features

H&R Block's Free Online (and Basic download) versions are meant only for simple federal tax returns. As soon as you have a deduction to declare (beyond the Child Tax Credit or student loan interest), you need to step up to a higher tier with more features that let you deduct things like donations, real estate taxes and mortgage interest. The free version handles unemployment income, an uncommon find at this tier as compared with the competition. 

If you’re self-employed with no expense deductions, you can use the Deluxe tier. At the Premium level, you gain support for rental income and deductions, Health Savings Accounts tracking, and investment and cryptocurrency transactions.

The Self-Employed version offers more complete support for independents and freelancers, full Schedule C business expense deductions and support for filing for home-office deductions, depreciation and vehicle expenses. If you start at a lower tier you can upgrade along the way.

The service has revamped its income hub to reflect societal changes since the start of the pandemic. The tweaks bring trends like more self-employed, multiple W-2 forms and cryptocurrency investment gains to the forefront, so you can consider them earlier and more naturally in the process. 

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: Available help

As a baseline, all H&R Block products include the online help pane and text-chat technical support offering free, 24/7 guidance on using the product. 

Additional tax expert help has gotten significantly less costly. Online Assist connects you with a tax pro over video, phone, screen share or chat (hours available are 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. CT weekdays, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. CT weekends). If you didn’t choose expert help at the outset, you can add it anytime from the nav bar, or from the pop-ads that occasionally appear reminding you of this upsell. 

Tax Pro Review is an upgrade, and you can’t find pricing on the site. Instead, this feature now says your tax complexity determines the cost, for example, with Deluxe costing $60 and Premium costing $90. The lack of transparency is a disappointment, considering last year it was clearer how much you were paying to step up, with the price scaling up based on your tier of service.

We were pleased to see H&R Block continues to evolve its help content, both with original writing and videos. The key-art style of blog posts on current tax topics — as found on the My Block page accessible through the left nav pane — makes learning more approachable. And as you move through your online return, you get context-sensitive help at the ready, always visible in a right-hand pane that can be accessed by the question-mark icon on the top navigation bar, or by clicking on a link in the main interface.

The help pane conveniently auto-populates to show relevant deeper explanations of terms. This pane’s time-saving design minimizes how much you fumble around the interface — making it a pleasure to use. Help includes answers to common questions, a search bar and related additional information. H&R Block says it has some new pop-ups to dig into more challenging topics.

Unlike TurboTax’s Live Full Service option, H&R Block’s do-it-all virtual tax pro service is still marketed outside of the do-it-yourself online services reviewed here. This more hybrid approach can have all-virtual communication, or you can go into a local H&R Block office and see a live tax pro.

Unfortunately, to set this up online, you have to enter your zip code and choose a local tax pro online to start the process, extra steps the fully virtual TurboTax Live Full Service on-boarding lacks. H&R Block says they use your zip code to match you with a tax pro with expertise on your state’s taxes, but that still doesn’t account for why we had to pick a tax pro from a local office before we could move forward.

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: Ease of use

A series of on-boarding questions, much like what TurboTax offers, guided us to which package was most appropriate. But if you start with a lower tier, the service still prompts you to upgrade to the appropriate product. For example, we started our review with H&R Block Deluxe, the first step up from the company's free tier. Once we had entered that we had 1099-Misc forms and were self-employed with expenses, the service directed us to upgrade to that version to have access to the correct tax forms. Same thing happened when we informed the software we had cryptocurrency.

If you’re a new user, H&R Block has some new information for those making the switch to H&R Block. The questions are the same, but now H&R Block makes it easier to upload the previous year’s tax return to jump-start the process. If you’re coming to H&R Block from TurboTax, you also get an AI review of their prior tax return to ferret out missed deductions; if H&R Block finds those, it walks you through getting money back from last year’s return.

Overall, the H&R Block online interface continues to reflect a unified, cohesive experience with large, bold fonts and friendly language. The site’s responsive design works on mobile web as well as laptop. Plus, H&R Block has a mobile app.

The look is the most visually engaging of any of the online tax software services, and remains ahead of TurboTax. As you move through the service, a help pane slides out at right and guides you through what something means, or the impact of the tax code changes.

As you make your way through the options, the topics populate beneath the icons, so you can easily navigate among sections after you’ve entered data. Of note: The overview gives quick links to a summary of tax forms, as well as the ability to amend a return.

As with TurboTax, H&R Block’s approach to tax prep guides you through a series of questions, and then they do the magic of filling in the actual tax forms in the background. (Before filing, you can see the actual forms that make up your return.)

The income hub has been visually updated to make it easier to add W-2 information, either directly or using a PDF or picture snapped on your mobile. Where other services use a QR code, H&R Block instructs you to trim the edges of your W-2, share your mobile number, and follow the secure link the service sends to upload your photo. You can also add the info manually, and add more than one W-2. The program did a good job prompting us to add information as we moved through questionnaires in the different sections.

After the W-2 entry, for example, it asked for our main occupation, and gave check boxes for secondary occupation and military service. Another screen asked whether we received, sold, exchanged, or disposed of cryptocurrency, tweaks to the already-clearest wording — and help — we’ve seen of this question. It also asked whether we earned money in another state.

The presentation is neat and easy to view, and certainly more expeditious than if the system kept questioning do you have X income (as TurboTax does). But they’re very different approaches to the same challenge: Helping you document all relevant data. As you add an income type, you further build out the income hub with the new tile-style visuals for grouping together relevant topics. While the service lets you move around within Income cards, you can’t jump to another section further ahead in the return without completing Income first.

An update from last year: H&R Block can import crypto transactions directly from your CoinTracker, and will be adding Coinbase as well (but it wasn’t an option when we tested the service). All of the crypto screens are improved, though, with clear explanations of what you need to do for transactions. 

On the whole, we found entering data more streamlined than in many competitors (for example, what you need to do to enter charitable deductions). Even entering self-employed and small business information is improved, with a central hub design and a smoother flow of prompts to tell their businesses’ financial story. But you can’t input data by taking a photo of a tax document (beyond your W-2); the only choices are to upload a file or input the data manually.

H&R Block Deluxe 2023 review: Verdict

H&R Block Deluxe 2023’s cohesive design and helpful guidance, combined with more affordable tax pro help pricing, makes it one of the best tax software programs to use when it's time to file your taxes.

For those seeking a full-service digital experience, TurboTax Deluxe is the better option as it has more extensive tax pro assistance — even if you have to pay more for the service. For everyone else, H&R Block Deluxe is easier to navigate and more refined at all levels.

As a fitness editor and a dog owner, I spend a lot of time walking and running outside, whatever the weather. Normally I’ll have completed a couple of thousand steps before sitting down at my desk at 9 AM, and more often than not, my day starts with an hour-long hike with an out milk latte in my hand, and my cocker spaniel in tow. So when I wrote an article about how to get paid to walk, I decided to download an app to my phone, just to see how much I could earn on the move.

The app I decided on was WeWard — a walking app with more than 10 million users in Europe that recently got released in the US. The app’s premise is simple: It’s free to download, and encourages people to walk more by allowing them to earn ‘wards’ for the steps they take. These wards can be converted into money, and the goal of the app is to improve health and cut down on carbon emissions. 

But how does the app work, and how do you convert your steps into money? I clicked download, grabbed my best running shoes, and left it tracking in the background to find out more. Read on to find out what happened. 

Looking for more workout inspiration? This dumbbell workout sculpts your abs in just 15-minutes, this Pilates exercise is one of the best for firing up your core, and this is what happens when you do 50 Russian twists a day for a week.

I used this app for two weeks and made money walking the dog 

The WeWard app is free to download on iOS and Android. Once downloaded, you’ll need to give the app permission to track your steps, as this is how you convert them into money. The app uses physical activity data to validate the steps you take, and geolocation data for the “I’m in” section of the app (more on this below), but promises not to sell your data with third parties.

Once downloaded and connected, your steps will appear on the app’s pedometer. You can earn up to 25 wards per day by walking, but you’ll need to log into the app to convert your steps. It won’t do this automatically — I walked 9 miles around Dublin on day three of testing the app, but forgot to click convert, so didn’t get any points for my miles. I’ve since set up a daily reminder that flashes up on my phone at 9 PM. You can earn extra wards for taking part in challenges on the app, such as converting an exact number of steps per day or converting your steps between a certain time window. 

You can also earn extra wards by visiting places on the map and checking in, buying from one of the partners on the app, watching advertising videos, or completing surveys. I didn’t do any of these things while using the app; instead, I just converted my steps each day. 1,500 steps earn you 1 ward, 3,000 steps take you to the second level of the pedometer and earn you 2 additional wards. The max number of steps you can convert each day is 20,000, and the max number of wards you can earn each day is 25 wards. 

In the UK, 1 ward is worth £0.005, in the U.S., that's $0.005, so 100 wards are £0.50/$0.50. You’re not going to get rich by walking using this app. After two weeks of strolling, and 13 days of converting my steps (let’s not talk about that forgotten day), I’ve made a total of £2.75 using the app, so I’m by no means earning enough to quit the day job just yet. That said, I haven’t had to do anything other than my normal steps to make that money. Once you reach 3000 wards, you can request a bank transfer worth £15/$15 into your account. You can also choose to donate this money to one of the app’s philanthropic projects.

My verdict after two weeks of walking with the app? It soon becomes addictive. I found myself taking extra steps, or going for a quick walk around the block to reach the final level of my pedometer on days when I’d spent too much time sitting down. And it seems it’s not just my addictive personality that’s to blame — the app launched in France in 2019 and has reported a 24% increase in the daily steps of those using the app. 

“Our goal is to get people walking the world over,” says Yves Benchimol, CEO and Co-Founder of WeWard. “Our convenience-driven society has made us inactive, isolated, and unhappy. Walking every day nurtures our bodies and minds, and walking makes the world healthier, happier, and more interconnected than ever. We’re seeking to rebuild communities and fight climate change just by incentivizing people to walk a little bit more every day.”

I’m still a few weeks away from my first bank transfer, but I’ll continue strolling with the app running in the background for now. Who knows, perhaps one day someone will develop a similar pedometer app for dogs, and my unruly spaniel can start to earn his keep. Until then, we’ll keep earning wards together.

Whatever app you choose to download to help you get paid to walk, you’ll want to be comfortable as you stride the sidewalks. We’ve hand-picked the best running shoes and the best hiking boots that will keep you comfy as you stroll, as well as the best fitness trackers to help you keep an eye on your daily step count. 

Next: Also check out — pull-up vs chin-up: Which is better for building strength?

In order for a phishing campaign to be successful, the cybercriminals behind it first need to ensure that their lures can reach potential victims, which is why they’ve recently turned to PayPal to send out fake invoices.

According to a new report from the Checkpoint-owned cybersecurity firm Avanan, cybercriminals are now using the legitimacy of PayPal to reach the inboxes of unsuspecting users.

Beginning in June of this year, the firm’s security researchers first observed this new technique which utilizes PayPal to send out malicious invoices and request payments. The cybercriminals behind this new campaign use free PayPal accounts to send emails from the company’s domain while spoofing the popular antivirus software brand Norton.

After creating an account, the cybercriminals use PayPal’s features to create fake invoices in which they edit the business name and fake phone numbers to make them appear more legitimate. 

These fake invoices also include a message that reads: “Thank you for purchasing Norton Security Premium plan, if you have not authorized this transaction please call us with your credit card details.” 

Unsuspecting users, who don’t remember signing up for Norton’s antivirus software, may call the number and provide their credit card details to avoid being changed. However, in doing so, they willingly give the attackers their phone number and payment information which can be used in future attacks.

The Static Expressway

This isn’t the first time that Avanan has observed cybercriminals abusing legitimate services in their attacks. In fact, just last month, it released a report detailing how QuickBooks was used to carry out a very similar type of attack.

As both QuickBooks and PayPal are on the Allow Lists of the best email services, emails sent from either service pass right through to reach a user’s inbox. Avanan calls this The Static Expressway and it refers to the practice of cybercriminals utilizing websites that are on static Allow Lists to ensure their phishing emails reach users’ inboxes.

In this case, Avanan notified PayPal of this new attack on July 19 and the company plans on updating its report with additional information once they hear back from the payments giant.

How to avoid falling victim to this and other phishing scams

In order to avoid this phishing scam, users first need to monitor their inboxes and PayPal accounts for fake invoices. If you receive an invoice for a product or service you don’t remember purchasing, you should check your PayPal account first to see if you may have ordered something and forgotten about it. However, you should never call the phone number on any fake invoices or provide your credit card details over the phone to anyone.

For those who are curious about the phone number on a fake invoice, Avanan recommends that users look up the phone number in a search engine first. Also, you can check a company’s website to see if the phone number provided on the invoice matches the one listed on their site.

Another big thing to look out for when it comes to phishing emails is a sense of urgency. Cybercriminals and scammers often give potential victims a short time frame to respond to their messages — this is a major red flag in regards to phishing scams and emails.

Now that Avanan is raising awareness to the fact that cybercriminals are abusing legitimate services to send out phishing emails, the companies being impersonated will likely require users to provide even more details when signing up to avoid having their services being misused. 

Samsung has just launched the Samsung Wallet, a new payment platform that combines Samsung Pay with Samsung Pass into one service to rule all your digital IDs, payment and loyalty cards, keys and more. 

In effect, this will give Samsung phone users, such as those with the Galaxy S22, a tool that’s much like the Apple Wallet available on iPhones. Secured by Samsung’s Knox security, Samsung Wallet can hold payment cards, tickets, and IDs like a driver’s license all within one location; it’s worth noting that official ID card support will arrive later in the year. 

But as an added bonus, there’s integration with the Samsung Blockchain Wallet, which lets users monitor cryptocurrency portfolios — handy for such a volatile form of digital currency. There’s also SmartThings integration, meaning you can use the Samsung Wallet to unlock doors with smart locks and digital keys; these keys can also work on cars that support them, such as vehicles from BMW, Genesis, and Hyundai. 

This level of integration should give Samsung phone users a more compelling reason to use the Samsung Wallet over the likes of Google Pay, which is widely available on the best Android phones. 

An Apple Wallet clone? 

However, the unique features the Samsung Wallet offers arguably can’t stand up to the functionality coming to Apple Wallet with the upcoming iOS 16 update.

Such features include ID cards stored in Apple Wallet that can be presented in apps for verification, all from a tap of a button. Apple Pay Later offers the ability for customers to split a purchase into four equal payments over six weeks with no interest or fees to pay. And Order Tracking provides detailed receipts and order tracking information for Apple Pay transactions that can be displayed in the Apple Wallet.

As such, there’s scope for Samsung Wallet to build out functionality, but the features it launches with are nevertheless compelling when compared to other digital wallets on Android phones. Currently, the Samsung Wallet is rolling out to Galaxy phones in the U.S., France, Germany Italy, Spain, and the U.K. All users need to do is open the Samsung Pay or Samsung Pass apps on eligible Galaxy devices running Android 9 Pie or later, and follow the update prompts.

For more on such smartphone-based wallets, check our our guide on mobile wallets.

EveryDollar from Ramsey Solutions is an online zero-dollar budgeting tool that follows a similar vein to YNAB. Available in free and paid tiers, the service stands out for its use of friendly, everyday language for guiding you through the process of setting up a budget.

The free version of EveryDollar sacrifices functionality and limits you to manual data input, which makes it less useful for tracking your cash flow. Stepping up to the premium paid version fixes that, and positions your budget as one pillar of a larger financial education. That’s because the upgraded paid version is one part of the Ramsey+ membership service that includes Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, EveryDollar, Baby Steps program, SmartTax, group coaching, and more.

The paid version of EveryDollar has a lot to like, but among the best budgeting apps, it’s only worth it if you plan to maximize your use of the full Ramsey membership.

EveryDollar: Cost

EveryDollar’s free version is useful for setting up a basic budget with manual inputs. It’s more useful for getting a picture of your money flow than, say, Personal Capital, which is also free and has a budgeting feature. However, every few steps of the way in the interface we were hit by an ad to upgrade since the feature we were trying needed the full paid version of EveryDollar.

The paid version of EveryDollar means upgrading to the Ramsey+ membership. Not only do you get a more functional budgeting solution, but you also unlock access to a slew of other financial education services and features from Dave Ramsey’s library of digital offerings. 

Ramsey+ membership starts at $59.99 for three months ($19.99 per month), and it costs $129.99 for a year ($10.83 a month, billed annually).

EveryDollar: Features

The free tier of EveryDollar is minimalism at its best — or worst. You can set a customized budget, create virtual savings funds that you’re allocating funds to from that budget, and track your debt payments. This is more than you get with some competing packages like Personal Capital, but it lacks the automation and real-time element found in the services from YNAB, Simplifi, and Mint.

The premium version of EveryDollar adds syncing with bank accounts, generating custom budget reports, the ability to download transactions as a spreadsheet, and get tracking recommendations and reminders (iOS only).

The premium EveryDollar is just one part of the bigger whole that is Ramsey+. You also get access to Financial Peace University, which includes nine lessons — four dedicated to outlining Ramsey’s seven Baby Steps, and five more with insights into spending, building wealth, real estate, insurance, and giving. Each lesson runs about an hour (some more, some less), and includes activities and worksheets intended to help you better understand financial concepts. You can also join a virtual nine-week class led by a coach that walks through the content in the videos.

A separate on-demand course is titled “Budgeting That Actually Works,”a nine lesson, 50-minute mini-course that explains the zero-based budgeting approach of EveryDollar and gives tips on how to approach budgeting. The videos are hosted by author Rachel Cruze, who also hosts a series of lessons around understanding your relationship with money.

Ramsey+ members also get a complimentary 1:1 coaching session with a Ramsey Preferred Coach, who’s trained and certified by Ramsey’s own coaching team of financial experts.

Another course titled “The Legacy Journey” gives Ramsey’s perspective on the intersection of biblical Christian scripture with wealth building and giving. (Note: This is one of several areas where Ramsey’s evangelical Christianity and biblical emphasis is very clear in the service. The EveryDollar budgeting component is not heavy-handed in its religious connections, but the Ramsey+ membership does have religious precepts scattered throughout. If you prefer your budgeting and financial advice served straight up without a dose of biblical scripture, we recommend looking at YNAB, which is also a zero-based budgeting app.)

EveryDollar: Available Help

EveryDollar free users can reach the chat widget and bot via the EveryDollar help center, which includes articles covering frequent questions and how to get started. 

EveryDollar Premium/Ramsey+ users have access to a live chat agent. At the bottom of the page sits a question mark for accessing the virtual bot. Ask the bot a question to get served up related links; or leave a message or request a live chat (available Monday to Friday, from 9:30 am to 5pm CT (from 8am on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays)). 

EveryDollar: Ease of use

We set up our account by entering our email and choosing a password, verifying our email, then entering our name. One thing we noticed from the outset: EveryDollar uses clear, large type and distinct color design to facilitate visual engagement — including the proclamation that the service will change our life! The page design is centered, to make page layout responsive for mobile and desktop use.

The next steps delve into money goals so we could build a budget that’s aligned with those goals. We liked that it asked us what our priorities were, plural, up front, and allowed us to choose more than one: pay off debt, save for retirement, stop living pay to pay, pay for kids’ college, save for a home, travel. 

The second of five onboarding steps covers your income sources. You can enter your income, both planned and received, and add additional sources (labeled by default as “Paycheck”). 

Of note here is the lack of differentiation of types of income (such as investment income). Next, you’ll encounter the first prompt to upgrade to Ramsey+ if you want to automate expense tracking by connecting a bank account. We started with the manual option to play through how EveryDollar works as a free app.

We generally liked the logical flow of expense tracking. You can enter your planned expenses with high-level categories like mortgage/rent, water, natural gas, electricity, cable, and trash. 

Editing labels, adding items, and entering data is a simple click away, and the interface was consistent as we moved through the next data points like monthly transportation expenses, food expenses, and personal expenses. We again liked the methodical thought process, and the ease with which we could tweak and customize the labels.

Many of the default labels are universal and work well for everyone (including an allowance for “fun money”). In the next section, Giving, the default label of “Church” is a rare reminder of EveryDollar’s religious influences. Up next is tracking your debt, by outlining what’s owed on your credit card, car payment, student loan, medical bills, and personal loans.

If you’re using the free version, you’re then subjected to an advertisement to join Ramsey+, before you can view the holistic outline of the financial information entered manually. And even then, the main screen shows an advert to upgrade, a reflection of EveryDollar’s heavy-handed push to join the Ramsey+ membership.

The main EveryDollar screen has a left navigation pane for moving among your budget, insights, Baby Steps, Ramsey Pros, but many of those are simply lead-ins to tempt you into additional services.

The main Budget section is broken down into two columns of cards. The center column has cards outlining your income and your expenses grouped by name. The income card remains fixed at the top, and you can reorder the cards beneath as you prefer.

A colorful breakdown of your expenses is visible at right when you have no line item selected. When you click on a specific line item in a card, you’ll see an expanded view at right to show the details like your spending history, the due date, or if the expense is actually a fund that carries over month-to-month to save towards a goal.

We liked that you could download the information entered as a .CSV file, which makes it easier to export your information if you’d like. If you haven’t connected accounts that will reflect all of this expense data, you’ll need to manually enter the data, which will quickly become tiresome. Regardless, if you stay with the free EveryDollar, at the least you will gain an easy way to eyeball your top-level expenses and how they balance with your income.

But to get the most of EveryDollar, you have to upgrade to the full Ramsey+ service and connect accounts (EveryDollar uses Mastercards’ Finicity service to bridge that secure connection).

To upgrade, you have to connect a checking account, because Dave Ramsey espouses not using credit cards. Once you’re in, EveryDollar runs through a fresh series of questions about your financial goals and current situation, going into deeper detail than on the free version. 

Your answers determine where you are in the 7 Baby Steps series (we randomly plugged in $10,000 of savings and it put us at step 3). And then the you open up into the Ramsey+ landing page. The page is structured a bit inconsistently, with a top nav bar for Learn, Budget, Track, but then below you see tiles for Financial Peace University (which is part of the Learn tab), EveryDollar (the same as the Budget tab), and Track (which takes you to where you are in the 7 Baby Steps). In spite of the label confusion, we liked that the page starts with a tile that walks you through getting started in the membership. It starts with the first lesson in the Financial Peace University, and a useful explainer about zero-based budgets, and sends you off to create an EveryDollar budget … on a separately branded page that lives on everydollar.com.

The structure and lack of cohesive visual aesthetic gives the Ramsey+/premium EveryDollar experience one of being cobbled together. Because once in EveryDollar, you can’t clearly navigate back to Ramsey+ (four of the tabs do lead back to Ramsey+, but the interface lacks a design element that points you there). You can enter EveryDollar from the everydollar.com page or from Ramsey+.

EveryDollar review: Mobile

EveryDollar’s mobile app has a clean and functional visual aesthetic that tracks with the web-based service. The app lacks any branding or links back to Ramsey+ when you’re signed in, another sign of the cobbled-together effect of EveryDollar’s premium version falling under the Ramsey+ umbrella. 

EveryDollar review: Verdict

Functionally, EveryDollar has a strong visual aesthetic and logical workflow for achieving zero-dollar budgets. The free version is limited in its abilities, since you have to manually enter all information. But that also makes it attractive if you want to get a more rough idea of where you stand with your cash flow, but don’t intend to maintain the budget daily. 

The premium EveryDollar, which is part of the larger Ramsey+ service, lets you link bank and credit cards. You’ll still have to do some manual upkeep of the data, but the automation brought by the premium version helps make a smoother experience. And with Ramsey+, you gain access to group coaching and education on financial principles as presented from Dave Ramsey’s perspective. We found EveryDollar easier to use with a clearer flow than YNAB, but we recommend YNAB for zero-based budgets since it costs $31 less (billed annually) and has broader customization. EveryDollar could be a good starting point for those who want some additional financial literacy tools; Ramsey’s personality can be an acquired taste, and his advice is often one-size-fits-all, but you can still find a lot of value in the Ramsey+ option. 

Intuit Mint provides a robust set of automated tools for tracking your personal finances. Among those tools is the one that makes this one of the best budgeting apps we tested: The ability to create multiple budgets to view your spending across different categories.

Part of Intuit’s stable of financial products — which includes TurboTax and QuickBooks — Mint has been around since 2006. Mint’s services are free, but at least one feature (bill negotiation) has an extra fee, and you’ll have to endure a steady diet of financial offers. 

Mint tracks your spending, provides financial alerts, and includes free credit monitoring from TransUnion. Once you link your financial accounts, you can set up a budget that draws on that information and track your transactions and  financial health from a single dashboard. (For this Intuit Mint review, we are focusing on the overall usability and budgeting capabilities.)

Intuit Mint review: Cost

Intuit Mint is free to use, but in exchange for its services, Intuit serves up a barrage of financial offers the services matched to you. These offers range from ads for other Intuit products (like TurboTax) to credit cards, loans, and more.  On mobile, those ads can be eliminated if you pay $0.99 per month; and on iOS you can subscribe to Mint Premium for additional features for $4.99 per month. Ad-free or Premium subscribers will see no ads beyond the Mint Marketplace via the web-based service (but bizarrely you can’t initiate the ad-free experience from the web). 

Mint is the only service we reviewed that has an individualized financial coaching package available at an extra cost. Mint suggests paying $125 for those two sessions, but it also claims you pay “what you believe it’s worth” when you schedule the second session.

Intuit Mint review: Features

Mint is a full-spectrum personal finance app that uses machine learning to make financial recommendations. Supply Mint with data either manually or by linking banking, credit card, and investment accounts, and the service provides a running view of your financial health and habits. As with Intuit’s TurboTax service, Mint connects to more than 20,000 local and international financial institutions. 

The service parses the data you’ve supplied into actionable and useful categories, providing a picture of your bills, transactions, credit score, budgets, goals, trends, and investments all under one-roof. It can also track your subscriptions and bulk edit transactions. And it provides handy visuals for viewing and parsing trends for spending, income, assets, debts, and net worth. Mint also supports tracking cryptocurrency investments.

Intuit Mint review: Available help

From within Mint, you’ll get very little in the way of guidance or financial education. The Mint life blog online has lots of articles and information, but you need to seek that out separately, outside of the service itself. The mobile app has links to Mint life, and a how-to-use tile that links out to Mint life, but that’s about it. Intuit offers Mint Financial Coaching for speaking with an accredited financial expert about your financial health, spending habits, and more. The first 15-minute session is free; after that, the service has a two-session coaching package (each session up to one hour), and additional sessions may be added as needed.

Intuit Mint review: Ease of use

After setting up an Intuit account (if you already have one from using one of Intuit’s other services, including TurboTax and QuickBooks — you’ll use that log-in). Mint gets straight to business by prompting you to connect your financial accounts. Connecting accounts is a key part of how to use the service, but we ran into stumbles and interface oddities from the start. The linking process depends upon the institution — some will have you enter the account information within the Mint interface, and others will require you to authorize account access at the financial institution first. 

The interface for connecting accounts lacks clarity and finesse (even in the beta version discussed later). For example, to connect a Citibank credit card, Mint first sends you to a pop-up to sign into your Citibank account and choose the accounts to connect, and then it will return you to Mint to import transactions. If you have multiple accounts, all boxes are checked by default, but you can uncheck boxes if you’d like to import specific accounts only. 

The overview screen is the focal point of Mint’s data presentation. And to be blunt, the first interface we were dropped into looked dated with its small, hard-to-read text and inconsistent visual design.

Then we noticed that a beta version of most views was available, and we selected that option. The Mint beta dramatically transformed the service’s usability and visual aesthetic.

According to Intuit, the redesign was rolled out temporarily to a “small percentage” of users, then was paused to make additional changes based on user feedback. Once those issues are resolved at an unspecified time, Intuit says “the rollout will commence.” Since the redesign is so significant, we’ll revisit this review when the rollout begins anew to see if anything about our experience changed.

The redesigned web interface represents a much-needed refresh, and the updated look and feel mimics the current interface of TurboTax. The service uses larger-size fonts fonts and heavier weight for the text, two changes that together boost readability. Even the graphics are larger and easier to read. Curiously, the options here don’t reflect the organization and presentation of the recently updated mobile app (more on that later) — but perhaps that’s part of the beta that remains a work-in-progress.

We noticed a smoother experience when we reviewed our credit card transactions. The data was presented clearly, and it was simpler to sort by category using a drop down filter (before it was a hypertext link off on the side of the page, in tiny text).

As with the prior version of Mint, the beta Mint site lacks any specific guidance on how to budget. But setting budgets for specific categories is easy, and the service works well to show you your income, spending, and goals all in one place so you can see if you’re on track at any given time.

When adding a budget category, you can choose the frequency, set the budget amount, and choose to start a new month with the leftover amount from the previous month – effectively rolling over any overages or savings. The categories will auto-populate with matching expenses found in your linked accounts. We liked how we could sort by which categories are over or under budget, which is useful for eyeballing areas to cut back on. Your goals appear at the bottom of the page.

Intuit Mint review: Mobile

Intuit offers dedicated iOS and Android apps. We tried the early March update on Android that rolled out a minty green visual redesign that is big on using the data you’ve connected to produce attractive graphics. Only the mobile versions give the option to remove ads, for $0.99 per month or $4.99 for Mint Premium on iOS. Security appears strong — we had two verifications before logging in. 

Each section of the service has a button along the top of the screen. Beneath that is a visualization of your habits, a context-sensitive graph that changes depending on which section you’re in. Spending is the first one you’ll see upon opening the app, useful if you’re trying to track how much you’ve spent at a particular time. 

For further detail, you’ll scroll down to select from among the buttons below. The main navigation — home, monthly, marketplace, and notifications — is a dock at the bottom of the screen, and only visible when you’re at the top of a page.

Budgets are no longer broken out on mobile as a separate label. Instead, you can access your budget info under the aforementioned new monthly tab — along with your spending, bills and subscriptions, goals, and bill negotiation. The latter aims to reduce your costs and looks like a feature, but it’s an extra-cost service powered by BillShark (you only pay if they succeed). You’re on your own to click around to set a budget — the app lacks guidance on how to get started, and arbitrarily sets the budget for you when you add a category (it chose $100 as the budget, but we could change by adjusting a slider). 

You can also manually add a transaction as a budget line item, and select whether it is income or expense and the payment type. On the whole, setting a budget via mobile lacks clarity (for example, you’re adding a transaction to a month, not to every month — as you can clearly do via web browser) and less detailed than we’d have expected. We did like the visuals for monthly cash flow and spending categories, though. 

At the time of our review, Mint Premium was only available for iOS (the Android version will come, but Intuit didn’t provide a target release date). Mint Premium adds monitoring and cancellation; spending projections based on your data and trends; a growth estimator for visualizing the impact of a decision today on your monetary future tomorrow; and money spotlights that provide visualizations based on your spending habits and trends as compared with those of your fellow Minters.

Intuit Mint review: Verdict

Mint is a well-rounded and free personal finance service for getting a picture of your fiscal health. The beta interface is light years ahead of where the service has been, but for now Mint still has room to improve clarity and guidance inside the service. 

Still, Mint stands alone in offering a 15-minute live consultation with a coach and the option to expand to several sessions (Simplifi by Quicken offers 15-minutes that targets personalized app navigation vs. than financial coaching). The closest any other service came was YNAB, which has free live Zoom education sessions which teach you how to use the service, and provide an opportunity to ask the instructor questions.

We felt that Simplifi by Quicken does a better job helping you think through your cash flow in the context of your greater financial picture, and it handles budgets in a more intuitive way, with better documentation. However, it costs $5.99 per month, making it $4 more than the ad-free version of Mint. Mint’s mix of features and functionality makes it stand out for both monitoring your net worth and setting budgets, but we really hope Mint rolls out its new interface soon. 

Personal Capital by Empower is the rare example of a company that sells a slate of paid advisory services, but also offers a useful free component. The web- and app-based tools provide top-level financial snapshots and tracking, but don’t go far enough for specific activities like budgeting and saving. 

From the outset, you won’t mistake Personal Capital, part of Empower Retirement’s suite of financial services, as anything but a wealth management advisor. In fact, its web site makes it hard to separate the noise related to its paid services from the value offered by the company’s free services, and even those free services feel like they’re surface level. Once inside, though, you have access to tracking and investment tools and a keep-it-simple take on budgeting and savings. However, as our Personal Capital review will show, it’s missing a few things found in the best budgeting apps.

Personal Capital: Cost

Personal Capital has a free account to view your net worth, set a budget, and plan savings. Where the company makes its money is if you sign up with its wealth management advisory services, which cost a percentage of how much money they’ll be managing. The fees are pricey, and start at 0.89% for clients with a minimum of $100,000 (and up to $1 million) to manage. That fee gives you access to Personal Capital’s portfolio funds and to a team of financial advisors (a portfolio of more than $200,000 gets you two dedicated advisors) that will guide you on your financial journey. 

Personal Capital review: Features

At the heart of Personal Capital’s free services is its Dashboard view of your synced banking and investment accounts, a handy way to view the bigger picture of your financial health and cash flow. The savings planner helps you jump start saving for retirement or an emergency fund, while its Investment Checkup will analyze your portfolio allocation and compare to Personal Capital’s recommendations. 

The Fee Analyzer looks for hidden or high fees in your linked investment accounts and the Retirement Planner gives you an idea of what’s possible. Make no mistake–all roads lead to trying on bigger and better Personal Capital services. For example, after we mocked up our retirement scenario, we were prompted to schedule a free 30-minute call with an advisor. 

The inclusion of a basic tier of monthly spending budget helps flesh out the finance-heavy perspective of the service, and the investment tools might complement or confirm what your own investment brokerage already offers.

Personal Capital review: Available Help

Since the service is more about aggregation and less about action, it comes as no surprise that written assistance is thin. A pop-up help bot resides at the bottom of every screen; you can also leave a message for an agent.

Personal Capital review: Ease of use

To start a free account, simply enter a username and email. The free account gives you access to the Personal Capital Dashboard and all of its tools, including views of your net worth and transactions, sorted by account type. 

Next you’ll answer a few questions about yourself, which the service would use to populate retirement and savings recommendations (we skipped this). Then, we added accounts, a simple process of selecting your institution and connecting to that institution to authenticate your account info. We liked how Personal Capital was explicitly clear about what info it was accessing from each institution.

Once in the service, you can also add the value of a home (via a Zillow integration), your portfolio, and other assets including cryptocurrency and car loans, and non-digital assets you can track manually – including art, jewelry, and cash. The investing and planning guidance depends on how much you link and share, of course.

We liked the clean, logical structure of Personal Capital. The right side of the page by default shows a slide-out side panel that shows your net worth, assets, liabilities, and accounts all in one place. The rest of the page is divided into different widget blocks that show snapshots of different aspects of your account and the market. Personal Capital was the only service to offer a daily account update upon log-in (and you can have that sent by email).

Personal Capital’s budgeting feature is listed under the Banking tab, and is visible on the dashboard page as a widget. The tool is very limited, but it does have value if you want to break your budget down into simple terms. As in, “I want to spend X amount a month.” Nothing more. The monthly budget is the only amount you can edit. Everything else is automatically categorized and imported from your transaction data. It shows your expenses across the past 30 days, and compares against the previous month.

The Savings Planner operates differently from other services. In Personal Capital, the Savings Planner targets your investments for retirement, savings for an emergency fund, and debt paydown. But it doesn’t help you with planned savings for vacations or other life events or desires.

Personal Capital review: Mobile

The mobile app provides visual snapshots, but it isn’t constructed where you have many actionable items. We could view our monthly budget and our spending by category, and could edit our target spend for the month, but that’s about it for budgeting. In other words, the same functionality as on the web browser, just a slightly different visual presentation. You can also view cash flow, transactions, your net worth, and view your portfolio.

Personal Capital review: Verdict

Personal Capital has an attractive veneer and some helpful tools to view your assets, but it’s not a substitute for more do-it-yourself-minded personal finance packages like Mint or Simplifi, or dedicated budgeting software like YNAB. Any of those three packages will do a better job at digging into where your money is going, and how much you spend a week. All Personal Capital does is give you an aggregate total to  budget for transaction expenses in a given month. That’s a far cry from YNAB’s active approach, where you assign every available dollar to a transaction or future transaction.

Adding accounts was a smooth experience, with the clearest explanations we’d seen of what you were granting access to and getting in return. And the dashboard provides a functional and crisp view of your finances and cash flow. But ultimately we found Personal Capital is big on showing you glamorous charts, but light on actionable functionality. 

Simplifi by Quicken is, as its name implies, a simplified approach to personal finance. This cloud-based service makes it easy to track your money and budget wherever you are. 

Now owned by Aquiline Capital Partners, Simplifi comes from the same stewards of long-time stalwart Quicken. Whereas Quicken is a full-scale personal financial package with desktop applications and online/mobile support, Simplifi pares back to basics, and it does so with a fresh, visually appealing interface and logical workflow to tracking accounts, setting savings goals, and creating budgets. Read the rest of our Simplifi review to see why this is one of the best budget apps around. 

Simplifi by Quicken review: Cost

Simplifi costs $5.99 monthly, and $3.99 per month billed annually ($47.99). The company offers a 30-day free trial, but you have to sign-up with a credit or debit card, or PayPal account.

Simplifi by Quicken review: Features

Simplifi by Quicken is designed to provide a visual snapshot of your financial health. The service handles account tracking across banks, investments, and credit cards and payment services, and combines this with spending and savings plans, bill alerts, and trends analysis of your spending, income, savings, and more. Unlike its well-known personal finance sibling Quicken, Simplifi began life as a web-first service, and its graphical look and feel reflect that history. 

Simplifi’s features stack up well against Quicken’s Deluxe tier (the step-up from Quicken Starter Edition that costs $51.99 a year). Quicken distinguishes itself by having desktop software for Mac and PC in addition to its online and web apps; and Quicken has stronger support for tax planning and investments. Simplifi doesn’t support banks outside of the U.S.; it does support cryptocurrency investments with connections to Coinbase, Robinhood, and other wallets as well as manual data entry. In the future, Simplifi says it will track cryptocurrency transactions out to multiple decimal points. 

The Simplifi service has strong budgeting features, even though you won’t see the word budget anywhere in the interface. You can create a budget for a month, create watchlists to track how much you’re spending, and choose to ignore one-time transactions from a monthly spending plan (something Quicken can’t do). It can help with savings goals and make suggestions for your budget based on your spending, but it doesn’t create multiple budgets or rollover budgets, nor does it do year-long budgeting – all of which the more traditionally structured Quicken can handle. 

Simplifi by Quicken review: Available Help

When you first log into the service, Simplifi has a guided tour that walks you through the sections. Additional guidance pops up when you first enter a section, as when we checked out the spending plan. 

The right nav bar has a support icon; click the question mark and a chat and help pop-up appears at the right of the screen. We could search for more information on a topic, or initiate a conversation with the bot and then a live agent. The service has live chat support 8 am to 5 pm Pacific seven days a week.  You can request phone support from the help center.

Simplifi by Quicken review: Ease of use

After you choose between a monthly or annual plan, you’ll set up an account log-in with your email address and provide payment information. Then you’ll add your cell-phone number and password, and that’s it – you’re in. Add your cell-phone number again to have the Android or iOS app link texted to you. And log-in again.

A welcome screen starts a basic onboarding process. The first verifies your name and zip code (pre-populated based on your billing information). Next you’ll connect accounts. As with Quicken supports more than 14,000 financial institutions; you can also add and manually track an asset or account. 

We had an issue getting an account recognized; Simplifi struggled with the two-factor authentication in conjunction with that banking institution. Eventually, Simplifi made a tweak on its end that fixed the problem. I next added accounts from other institutions with no problems. A drop-down lets you choose which accounts to add If you have multiple accounts at an institution.

Once we added some accounts, Simplifi dropped us into the main dashboard (you can’t nose around the service without adding at least one account). The default view is an eye-catching dashboard of cards showing snapshots of data culled from the different sections of the service. Upon first use, the service walked us through a quick tour of the interface. 

We liked how we could customize Simplifi’s interface to meet our needs and preferences. For example, we could reorder the cards on the dashboard, change tags, and set rules and filters to add layers of flexibility beyond Simplifi’s own machine learning intelligence. We also liked that Simplifi gave us guidance from within the service, something competitors like YNAB lack. 

As with the interface, Simplifi’s budgeting abilities have a degree of flexibility. The term “budget” is not seen anywhere in the interface; instead, Simplifi has natural language and workflow that effectively translates into creating a budget by completing the previous steps. Instead of setting a “budget” for a category as in Mint, you set a Watchlist to track how much you’re spending on a particular category. 

The service’s help options have useful budgeting tip entries to help you understand how to use Simplifi’s tools to your advantage. Simplifi is unusual in that it not only works across multiple budgeting approaches, but it also outlines how it can be used across four styles of budgeting: zero-based, envelope-style, pay-yourself-first, and 50/30/20.

Your budget comes together under Simplifi’s Spending Plan. Simplifi analyzes your recurring transactions based on your accounts to identify your available funds based on what’s left of your income after both your paid and expected bills and your savings. You can manually add income and spending events, add tags and categorization as relevant. This approach makes budgeting more intuitive and flexible than on other services.

For the most part, we found Simplifi’s tools for watching expenses and reporting your financial health logically laid out and easy to navigate. We found the Watchlist approach an appealing method to keep an eye on spending, based on category, payee, or tag. In turn, this feature made it easy to track our coffee expenses, takeout dinners, and grocery shopping. Setting savings goals for savings provides simple, easy visuals that help you get to your target by your intended date.

The biggest interface obstacle we encountered was when we were manually adding income not represented in our accounts. The manual add form is actually the same across categories, but oddly the category for income falls under a drop-down, while “uncategorized” leaves only Bills or Subscriptions as check boxes below, outside of that drop down. Once we selected “Personal Income” under the category drop down did the context of the available “type” of the funds being added change.

Simplifi by Quicken review: Mobile

Like the web-based service, the Simplifi mobile app for iOS and Android is highly customizable. By default, the banking card sits up top, so you can view your funds at a glance, but you can rearrange the remaining cards as you like. A hamburger menu at the top left reveals each section, making navigation among elements simple and just a few taps. 

The presentation is gorgeous and uncluttered, with easy to read text, useful graphics, and logical organization. The functionality follows what you get on a web browser, just in a more condensed form designed for a phone’s vertical screen.

Simplifi by Quicken review: Verdict

With its elegant design and flexible approach, Simplifi by Quicken makes it appealing to monitor your money, and delivers reports that help you stay on top of your finances.  We especially liked the logical flow of how budgeting could work, how we could monitor how much we were spending on specific categories, and how we could set savings goals. The service costs $5.99 per month, making it a dollar more than Mint Premium on iOS, and $4 more than the ad-free Mint service.  . 

Simplifi and Mint are more closely similar than dissimilar in that they look at a wide swath of your financial picture, and budgets are one component within that that use the account monitoring you’ve already entered. While YNAB is the best app that’s focused solely on budgeting, YNAB also only allows for zero-based budgeting and nothing more. If you’re looking for more elastic options for watching your spend along with robust net worth and account monitoring features, Simplifi is the better option. 

One of the best perks about Venmo is, as long as your Venmo account is tied to your bank account, you never have to worry about adding money in the app. Even if you have a balance of zero in your Venmo, you'll still be able to make payments. The funds will just be drawn from your regular bank account. (If you don’t have the funds in your bank account, well, that’s another story.) Basically, if you enter a payment amount that’s greater than what you have in your Venmo account, Venmo automatically takes the difference from your linked funding source.

However, Venmo also has another option for users - the Venmo Mastercard Debit Card. The card functions just like any other Mastercard, letting you make everyday purchases with your Venmo balance. 

Venmo users with the Venmo Mastercard Debit Card have the option to add money from a verified bank account directly to their Venmo balance. It's super simple and takes just a few steps.

So if you have a Venmo Mastercard Debit Card and want to add money to your Venmo balance, simply follow the instructions below:

How to add money to your Venmo account

1. Add a bank account. If you haven’t already, add a bank account to your Venmo profile and verify it.

2. Tap Manage Balance. Open the Venmo mobile app and tap the "Me" tab. From there, click “Manage Balance.”

3. Tap “Add Money," then enter transfer amount. Enter the amount you’d like to transfer, and tap “Done”

Confirm the bank account you’d like to transfer money from, and tap “Next.”

5. Review the transfer information and estimated arrival date, and then tap “Add Money.” 

Note: Once you do this, there is no way to cancel your transfer.

If you have more questions, be sure to check our FAQ What is Venmo? as well as our guide on how to use Venmo and how to add money to Venmo. If you've paid someone by mistake, you'll want to know how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user as well as how to cancel a Venmo payment. And if you're done with the service entirely, here's how to delete your Venmo account. 

So you tried Venmo and it’s not for you. And you don’t want to just leave your Venmo account inactive – not when it’s tied to your bank account. You want to delete your Venmo account. 

It’s easy to delete your Venmo account, but you just can’t do it on a mobile device — you’ll need a desktop computer. And in order to delete your Venmo account you’ll need to make sure you have no incomplete transactions and no money in your Venmo account.

After you successfully delete your Venmo account, all of your transaction history, as well as all of your personal and bank data, will be deleted. You will get a final email showing your entire Venmo transaction history, so if you want to have a record of your Venmo transaction history, be sure to save it.

If you want to close your Venmo account for any reason, follow the steps below.

How to delete your Venmo account

1. Log in to your Venmo account on a desktop computer browser. You cannot close an account on a mobile device or in the app.

2. Check for incomplete transactions. To make sure you have no incomplete transactions hanging around, click on “Incomplete” on the homepage and address anything there.

3. Clear out your balance. From the homepage, click on “Transfer Money” and transfer any funds in your Venmo account to your bank account. Any funds remaining in your Venmo account at the time you close your account will not be available to you without contacting Venmo.

4. Open Settings, and click on “Close My Venmo Account” at the bottom of the Settings page.

5. Check your email for confirmation. Once your account is closed, you’ll receive one final transaction history email.

If you have more questions, be sure to check our FAQ What is Venmo? as well as our guide on how to use Venmo and how to add money to Venmo. If you've paid someone by mistake, you'll want to know how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user as well as how to cancel a Venmo payment. 

Vemo is so easy to use and is great about making you hit Pay a second time before you part with your money, so payment mistakes rarely get made. But alas, we’re human; maybe we’ve got fat fingers and paid Joe-Smith-4 instead of our friend whose Venmo ID is Joe-Smith-3. 

The bad news is, it’s not possible to cancel a Venmo payment to an existing Venmo account. Once you send a payment, the funds are available to the recipient right away. If you need the payment returned, you must have the recipient send you a payment for the same amount.

That said, Venmo Support can reverse a payment if the recipient gives their explicit permission, their account is in good standing, and they still have the funds available in their Venmo account. (Perhaps they couldn’t pay back the sender due to technical difficulties.)

But have no fear if you’re using Venmo to purchase goods or services – as long as the transaction is marked as such, Venmo now offers purchase protection at no additional cost to the buyer. Click here for details on Venmo Purchase Protection.

If you accidentally paid your friend twice (or made a duplicate payment)

1. On the app, tap “Pay or Request”
   
2. Enter the recipient’s user name, email, or phone number
   
3. Enter the amount of one of the payments 
   
4. Include a note asking them to pay you back for the money sent by mistake
   
5. Tap “Request”

If you sent a payment to a phone number or email address that has not been registered with a Venmo account yet and you want to take the payment back

You can follow the same instructions on venmo.com after logging in and clicking on “Incomplete” on the homepage. (Note: Payments sent via iMessage work a bit differently. Check out this article if you sent your payment via iMessage.)

If you believe that you are the victim of a scam, or you have paid the wrong person and they won’t pay you back

Email support@venmo.com or fill out this contact form, which can be found on the app by opening the menu and clicking Get Help → Contact Us. To get to the form on venmo.com, click on Help and then click on Contact Us at the bottom of the page. 

Be sure to include the following details: 

• Username of the person that you sent the funds to
• Amount of the payment
• Date of the payment
• Username, phone number, and email address of the person that you meant to pay

If you have more questions, be sure to check our FAQ What is Venmo? as well as our guide on how to use Venmo and how to add money to Venmo. If you've paid someone by mistake, you'll want to know how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user. And if you're done with the service entirely, here's how to delete your Venmo account. 

The answer to the question “Do you take Venmo?” is more and more frequently a resounding yes, as the number of people using the app has grown by several million in just the past year. Venmo is also making a push into business payments, so it’s not just friends paying each other back for dinner or concert tickets anymore – now you can use Venmo to pay for all sorts of goods and services.

Venmo is an easy-to-use app that you tie to your bank account that allows you to pay and receive money. Once set up, sending money with Venmo is as easy as entering the name of the friend or business you’re paying, tapping Pay or Request, entering an amount, a note about what it’s for, and hitting Pay. Requesting money on Venmo works the same way: Enter the name, hit Pay or Request, enter the amount and what it’s for, then hit Request.

So you’ve got a Venmo account, your friend has a Venmo account, and one of you owes the other money. Let’s get ready to Venmoooooooooo! Here’s a step-by-step guide to sending and receiving money on this popular person-to-person mobile payment service.

1. Launch the app

Launch the Venmo app on your mobile device. (You can’t send and receive money through the website).

2. Hit “Pay or Request”

Find the Pay or Request button on the home screen—it will either say “Pay or Request,” or it will look like a pencil and a square.

3. Enter a name

Enter the username, phone number, or email of the person(s) you’d like to pay or charge. Make sure you’ve got it exactly right, as you wouldn’t want to pay Joe_Smith_4 when your friend is actually Joe_Smith_5.

4. Enter the amount

If you want to send your friend $50, enter “50” in the field with the dollar sign to the right of the person’s name.

5. Leave a note

In the “What’s it for” field, located below the person’s name, type in whatever you want. As you type, suggested emojis will pop up. Choose to include them if you wish.

6. Change the privacy setting (optional)

At the bottom right of the screen is the privacy setting, which you can tap to change. “Public” indicates that everyone can see this transaction; “Friends” indicates that the transaction is only visible to the sender, recipient, and their Venmo friends; and “Private” indicates that it’s only visible to the sender and the recipient.

7. Choose your action

Tap on either “Request” or “Pay” in the blue bar, depending on which action you want to do.

8. Confirm

Tap on the green confirmation bar that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

9. Check your email

You will receive an email confirming the transaction. 

And that's all that there is to it! If you have more questions, be sure to check our FAQ  What is Venmo? If you've paid someone by mistake, you'll want to know how to cancel a Venmo payment and how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user. And if you're done with the service entirely, here's how to delete your Venmo account.

Venmo began as an app that allows you to pay and request money from  friends, and while it’s still the simplest and most popular way to split cab fare, Venmo has grown into a financial platform that may be all you need in addition to a traditional bank account. 

From 2021 to 2022, Venmo’s user base grew from just over 60 million users to more than 83 million—and those users were given a plethora of new ways to incorporate Venmo into their daily lives. You can get a Venmo Debit Card, a Venmo Credit Card, and get cash from your Venmo account at an ATM. You can use Venmo to checkout online at Amazon and any website that takes PayPal (which acquired Venmo in 2013) or IRL at CVS Pharmacies and elsewhere with a QR code. You can cash a check at home and even buy and sell crypto, all using the Venmo app.  

Despite all the new ways that Venmo has made it easier to access and manage your money the past year or two, the app is still super simple to use. It’s still social — Venmo features a stream showing everyone’s transactions — and still fun, with the use of emojis to indicate what a payment is for.

From how to open a Venmo account to how to use the app to how the Venmo Credit Card compares to others to how Venmo is different from its sister PayPal, here’s everything you need to know if you’ve ever wondered what is Venmo.

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What is Venmo?

Venmo is a mobile payment service that provides a way to pay friends and others when you don’t want to deal with cash. Venmo account holders can transfer funds to other Venmo account holders quickly and easily through a mobile app.

Venmo is also a way to pay for things online at authorized websites or in person with a Venmo Debit Card or new Venmo Credit Card. 

How does Venmo work?

To use Venmo, you must first set up an account, which you can do by downloading the Venmo mobile app (available for iOS and Android) or at venmo.com. In addition to the usual name, address, and phone info, you will be asked to enter your bank account information. You must link a bank account to your Venmo account in order to use Venmo. (Note: Venmo is only available in the United States and only compatible with U.S.-based banks.)

Once you are signed up, it’s fast and easy to pay someone or request money from someone: Using the app (you can’t pay or request money through the website), find the Pay or Request button on the home screen—it will either say “Pay or Request,” or it will look like a pencil and a square. You then enter as many people — by username, phone number, or email — as you’d like to pay or charge, the amount, and a note. Emojis will pop up as you type certain words in your note, and you can choose to use them or not.

For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to use Venmo.

All Venmo users are also assigned a personal QR code, and you can scan someone else’s to find them or show yours to a person or merchant to be scanned. However you’ve entered the info, once you’re ready to make the transaction, tap “Request” or “Pay” depending on the action you want to take. If you are paying someone, they will receive an email to click on to accept the payment, and then you will receive an email confirmation.

If you are requesting money, the other person will receive an email for the request, and you’ll receive an email notifying you that you’ve been paid. If you are making a payment and don’t have enough money in your Venmo account, Venmo will automatically take the difference from your linked bank account. On the other hand, if you have a lot of money in your Venmo account and want to transfer it to your bank account, on the app, simply go to the menu and click on “Transfer balance.” On venmo.com, click on “Transfer money” on the homepage.

What are the fees for using Venmo?

Venmo costs nothing to set up, nothing to send or receive money, and there are no monthly fees. So how does Venmo make money, you ask? Well, it didn’t for a long time. But Venmo is facilitating more and more transactions between its users and businesses, and when it does that, it charges the business a small percentage of the sale, similar to a credit card company. This is how Venmo makes most of its money.

There is also a lot of potential money to be made using the data Venmo collects, though that has yet to be sorted out. Note that there are, in fact, some fees, but they are easily avoidable. For example, there’s a 3% fee for sending money using a linked credit card and a 1% (max $10) fee for moving money between your bank account and your Venmo account instantly (it normally takes one to three days).

How do you reach Venmo customer service?

Accidentally pay the wrong person and they kept the money, or need help with something else? Venmo does not have a general customer service phone number, but there are a few ways to reach them. Which route to go depends in part on the topic of your question. 

1. You can send a message about anything to support@venmo.com or by filling out this contact form, which can be found on the app by opening the menu and clicking Get Help and then Contact Us. To get to the form on venmo.com, click on Help and then click on Contact Us at the bottom of the page.
2. You can chat about any topic in the Venmo mobile app (M-F, 7:00am-1:00am EST; and Sat-Sun, 9:00am-11:00pm EST). To start a chat, from the menu, click on Get Help → Contact Us. Note there is no chat function on venmo.com. 
3. For questions related to the Venmo Mastercard Debit Card, send a message through this contact form, email debitcardsupport@venmo.com, chat in the mobile app, or call the phone number on the back of your card. 
4. For questions related to the Venmo Credit Card (powered by Visa), call Synchrony Bank at the phone number listed on the back of your card. If you lose your card, call Synchrony Bank at 855-878-6462

If you don't want to use the service anymore, here are instructions on how to delete your Venmo account.

Is there a Venmo card?

As noted above, there are two Venmo cards, one debit and one credit. The Venmo Debit Card, powered by Mastercard, is connected to your Venmo account and allows you to shop at participating merchants. Like other debit cards, you can also use it at an ATM to get cash from your Venmo account. (Withdrawals are limited to the funds in your Venmo balance up to $400 daily, and there is a $2.50 fee for using an out-of-network ATM.)

The Venmo Credit Card is a Visa issued by Synchrony Bank that allows you to make contactless payments, split your credit card purchases with friends on Venmo, request new virtual card numbers and earn cash back on your purchases that goes straight into your Venmo account (3% cash back on your top spend category, 2% on the next, and 1% on everything else). The Venmo Credit Card has no annual fee. Note: Not all Venmo account holders are currently eligible to apply for the Venmo Credit Card — if you are eligible, you’ll see a Venmo Credit Card section at the top of the main menu of your Venmo app.)

What is Venmo for Business and how does it work?

Venmo for Business allows business owners to accept Venmo payments in their apps, online, or in person with a unique business QR code. When a business sets up a Venmo Business Profile (free of charge; there is a 1.9 percent plus $0.10 fee per transaction), customers can pay them the same way they pay their friends on Venmo. It’s easy to set up a business profile under your existing Venmo login and seamlessly switch from your personal profile to your business profile in just a tap.

Venmo also offers Purchase Protection for both buyers and sellers on any transaction identified as being for goods and services. (Payment Protection is also available for payments to strangers for things like concert tickets or a couch, as long as the transaction is identified as being for goods and services.) 

Here’s how to set up a Venmo business profile:

• In the Venmo app, tap your profile picture in the top left corner, then tap “Create a business profile.”
• Customize your profile, adding details that make you special.
• Tap “Publish.”

How do I buy and sell crypto on Venmo?

Venmo is a great platform to get your feet wet in crypto investing. They have solid educational resources (articles and videos) and keep it simple by only offering four different types of crypto to invest in: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. What’s more, you can invest as little as $1, get price alerts to track your investment, and share your crypto investments in your Venmo feed. 

Here’s how to buy crypto on Venmo:

• Open Venmo and tap the crypto icon in the menu at the bottom of the screen.
• Tap on the coin you’d like to purchase.
• Tap “Buy” (You’ll need to tap Agree to terms and conditions the first time)
• Enter the amount of money you’d like to invest (as little as $1)
• Tap “Review”
• Tap “Buy”

Is Venmo safe?

Yes. But you need to be vigilant. The transactions themselves are super safe: Like it’s competitors, Venmo uses encryption to help protect your account information and monitor your account activity to help identify unauthorized transactions. For another layer of security, you can add a PIN code to the app. There have been some Venmo-related scams, but a little common sense can avoid them: Don’t send money to strangers or for things that look like pyramid schemes. 

For more, check out our guide on how to cancel a Venmo payment and how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user.

There is, however, a privacy concern regarding Venmo’s social feed: A lot of people make a fuss about the fact that Venmo’s default setting is Public, meaning your transactions are visible to everyone on the internet in Venmo’s emoji-filled stream. So if you’re not comfortable having the world know who you had dinner with last night, you must elect to make your transactions either private or visible only to friends.  

What are the Venmo limits?

When you sign up for Venmo, your person-to-person sending limit is $299.99. Once Venmo has confirmed your identity, your weekly rolling person-to-person spending limit is $4,999.99. The overall combined spending limit for person-to-person, authorized merchant payments, and Venmo Debit Card purchases is $6,999.99 per week. Click here for details.

Venmo vs. PayPal vs. Zelle: What's the difference?

PayPal started out as an e-commerce payment platform and added person-to-person payments; Venmo started out as a person-to-person payment platform and added e-commerce capabilities. So you might suspect that each platform is stronger in its original purpose — and you’d be correct.

PayPal works internationally, has a better security track record and higher spending limits, whereas Venmo makes it simpler, faster, and more fun--emojis!--to pay and request money. Zelle, meanwhile, is the big banks’ answer to Venmo and PayPal. The main differences are that Zelle is a function within your bank’s app rather than its own app, the money transfers instantly as opposed to one to three days, and its security is as solid as the steel vaults in the banks behind it. 

The 600-pound gorilla in the ID Protection space, LifeLock has one of the most comprehensive services for preventing an identity theft and if that fails, surviving it. 

With lots of insurance, monitoring and credit scores, the service has a multitude of plans and the ability to add Norton’s excellent malware protection as well. Its array of plans and subscriptions can be confusing, none of which include simulators to try out what-if credit scenarios and it gets expensive with add-ons like malware protection and VPN access. 

Our LifeLock Ultimate Plus review will help you decide if this is the best identity theft protection service for you or if you’d be better off with something simpler.

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Costs and what’s covered

With a slew of options to choose from (with and without Norton 360 malware protection), LifeLock continues to have one of the widest assortments of plans. It allows fine-tuning of coverage that others lack but can come at the cost of frustration.

The LifeLock lineup starts with the $12 a month ($125 per year) Standard package that includes $1 million in insurance as well as $25,000 to recover stolen funds. It comes with single bureau credit monitoring from Equifax but no scores or full credit reports; you can get free reports from all three agencies annually. 

By contrast, the Advantage subscription ($23 a month or $240 a year) adds the ability to instantly lock your credit and can monitor your phone for evidence of a SIM Swap or Port-Out attack. It continues with single credit bureau monitoring and scores as well as monthly access to reports. The plan includes $1 million for restoring your identity and increases the reimbursement for stolen money to $100,000. There’s also monitoring of court records and payday loan companies for your personal data. The Advantage subscription has one more thing: AI-based monitoring of changes to recurring charges or unusual charges. 

I looked at the top-of-the-line Ultimate Plus plan that costs $35 a month or $340 a year, one the most expensive plans available. It adds credit monitoring from all three agencies, daily reports from Equifax; TransUnion and Experian deliver annual reports. In the background, Norton LifeLock keeps an eye on your social media presence in a bid to prevent damage to your reputation in addition to monitoring of your bank and investment accounts for a take-over. There are also address- and home-title-change alerts. Finally, it keeps an eye on File Sharing Network searches for signs of your sensitive information. The Ultimate Plus plan ups the insurance to include $1 million for recovering stolen money due from identity theft for a total of $2 million. 

There are also Family plans that can include a pair of adults, up to five or seven children (under 26 years old) that live with the family. These plans top out at a total insurance level of $3 million and can cost up to $680 per year.

Finally, it’s easy to add Norton 360 malware coverage. For the Ultimate Plus plan, the added cost is $10 a year for a total of $350. It covers the security of an unlimited number of computers (Windows, Mac, Android and iPhone/iPad) and includes a firewall, parental controls, VPN and other features. 

Now part of Gen Digital, LifeLock is too new to have a Better Business Bureau rating. In the recent past, Norton LifeLock had a highly sought-after A+. 

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: How we Tested

In the late summer of 2022, I signed up for LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan and paid for the monthly subscription; I was reimbursed by Tom’s Guide. I checked my credit scores and alerts several times a week and used several computers when doing so. Over my three months with Ultimate Plus, I checked in with the support staff with a coverage question and at the end canceled the service. 

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Credit scores and identity monitoring

The company’s Ultimate Plus plan provides daily data from Equifax and scores from TransUnion and Experian monthly. The VantageScore 3.0 score is a good alternative to FICO for creditworthiness. 

Ultimate Plus checks for activity on your credit card, bank and investment accounts as well as action at the major payday loan companies. It includes a freeze on payday loans. It also works with people-search firms like Intellius and Spokeo to scan for your name.  

In addition to watching for address and home title changes, the Ultimate Plus plan watches for your personal information on the dark web that might be an early indication of identity problems. The personal indicators include Social Security number, name, address; the system can piece together fragments from different sources.

The Social Media Monitoring protection watches for indications of odd posts, cyberbullying or indications of an account take-over.

It works with Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat.

LifeLock Ultimate Plus: Insurance and services

The LifeLock service is unique in that it doesn’t use an insurance company, like AIG. Instead, the company self-insures against your losses. This technique might be a cause for concern if the company were not such a large, well-financed and established firm.

That said, The Ultimate Plus plan includes up to $1 million to cover lawyers, consultants, experts and accountants to help you get your life back. This includes paying for new documentation (like a driver’s license and passport) and can cover lost wages and travel expenses for meetings and court appearances. There’s also another million dollars to cover stolen funds. This $2 million reserve matches the max that Bitdefender will pay out in an identity crisis as well. For family plans, the limit can rise to $3 million.

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Notifications and alerts

There are a variety of LifeLock alerts to let you know when something fishy is going on with your credit scores or accounts. The warnings can arrive via text or email and are shown prominently on the service’s interface. They range from data breaches to payday loans and attempted account hacks. The credit card and bank accounts have thresholds that are set by default at $500 for transaction alerts; they can be raised or lowered. 

The recently added Phone Takeover monitoring watches your phones (and SIM card) for signs of abuse. In addition, any utility account can be monitored and frozen if there’s a sign of misuse. The sex offender alert shows if someone on the registry has moved into your area but doesn’t include a map.

During my three month use of Ultimate Plus, I received four alerts, mostly for inquiries made on my credit history. 

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Setup

Protecting my identity started at the LifeLock site, where I clicked on “Start Membership”, picked the monthly Ultimate Plus plan and created an account.

After paying (credit card or PayPal), I added my address, Social Security number, date of birth and phone number and accepted the company’s license.

Once I confirmed my email address, I saw the Dashboard with an alert about a data breach. There was, however, one more thing. On my first log in, the service jumped to the Monitored Information page, where I needed to fill in things like my mother’s maiden name and even my gamer tag. Oddly, it required me to enter the credit card I used to pay for the service.

My last task was to load the LifeLock Identity by Norton app on my Galaxy Note 20 smartphone. All told, the process took 15 minutes.

In addition to a large amount of self help online, like videos, tips and downloads, Norton LifeLock has staff on call all-day and -night to answer questions and concerns; others limit the tech support phase to 10 or 12 hours a day, and often just weekdays.

The Ultimate Plus plan adds priority care. The tech support people quickly answered a question about the credit freeze feature after waiting in the phone queue for five minutes.

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Interface and utilities

It’s easy to get into the LifeLock service to make changes or just see credit scores. The web interface’s Dashboard showed everything from alerts and credit scores to Social Media Monitoring and Identity Lock. It loaded quickly but there’s a lot of zooming required. The best balance was at 50% or 67% zoom and some scrolling.

In the upper left is small green text that reassuringly says, “Monitoring active”.

The current credit score shows up near the top and one click below the surface is a cornucopia of data from the report. It includes loans, credit card accounts and recent credit inquiries. My favorite is the total credit card debt section that I wish were true, but it missed a card’s balance. I was able to see the detailed Equifax, Experian and TransUnion credit data and download the full credit report.

All the major items – from ID restoration and Transactions to Alerts and Monitored Info – are listed in the menu on the left. The Identity Lock is the place to go to lock accounts, including credit freezes that extend to all three bureaus – not just one. There’s also a way to suspend utility and bank accounts.

Meanwhile the Privacy Monitor shows potential vulnerabilities and has contacts for remedying the problems. The items can be automatically fixed but only if you pay $125 a year for the Privacy Monitor Assistant.

It’s well hidden, but in the upper right of the interface is a blue-lined box. Click on it to get Norton LifeLock’s Protection Report. It combines alerts that require immediate attention with data breaches and how much of the services features I was using but lacks an overall score.

There’re two things missing from the Norton LifeLock ID protection equation: a credit simulator to help decide how actions will impact credit scores and articles on identity theft and how to avoid it. There are, however, several stories in the Support pages of Norton’s site that were generally helpful but undated.

The app’s look and feel matches the browser approach but with brighter graphics. Alerts are at the top while credit scores and locks are below. There’re links to ID restoration specialists and support a level below. It can use a phone’s fingerprint scanner and two-factor authentication.

At the top of the app are LifeLock’s alerts, with details available with a left swipe. Below are the current credit score, recent financial transactions and information that needs to be entered. My favorite is the Identity lock that let me start a TransUnion Credit Lock or a Payday Loan Lock.

Over my three months of using Norton LifeLock Ultimate Plus, the web interface forced me to log out in order to log in several times, a problem I encountered after an hour or so of inactivity. Other times, the entire service appeared unavailable with a note for me to try back later.

LifeLock Ultimate Plus review: Cancellation

To move on from LifeLock, I used the Android app. After several screens making sure I really wanted to leave, I was able to cancel the subscription.

I got confirmation a few minutes later.

Norton LifeLock Ultimate review: Verdict

No other identity protection service does as much as LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan, and that’s good and bad. It includes the expected ($2 million insurance, credit scores and monitoring) and goes the extra mile with innovative features (SIM card takeover protection and social media monitoring). It can even be bolstered with Norton 360 security protection. 

That said, it is for those who want an all-encompassing system that can best be described as smothering. It’s also among the most expensive with family plans pushing $680 a year. Still, if you want the most comprehensive protection, LifeLock is the way to go. 

Millions of people use it every day to make payments online but is PayPal safe to use? If you're yet to set up a PayPal account, this may well be the first question you ask. But even if you're one of the company's 392 million active users, you could still be wondering if your financial data is being kept secure and whether you're at risk of fraud and identity theft.

PayPal was founded in 1998 and it certainly created a well-tested and highly-trusted online payments system during that time. Lots of major brands use PayPal for their online payments and it's regularly used to transfer money between friends and family. Most people have also come across it when buying items on eBay. But is it really one of the safest ways to conduct a transaction?

How does PayPal secure transactions?

When you enter the details of your bank account, credit card or debit card (depending on what you want on file), the data is encrypted and stored in PayPal's secure database. Since this is a single online vault, your financial data is only kept in one place rather than across multiple locations. It is regarded as a safer way of retaining your information.

Any transaction you make is also secure. When paying for an item, your financial details are never shared. A seller or someone you're transferring money to will never ever see the numbers of your bank or card accounts. That's one of the main points of PayPal — the fact you don't share actual financial information with sellers or people you transfer money to. 

What's more, all transactions are encrypted at both ends using secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol technology with 128-bit encryption. And, as a back-up, every transaction is monitored for anything suspicious day and night. If anything is flagged as odd, a member of PayPal's team is alerted and this helps to protect against email phishing, identify theft and fraud.

Are users protected if something goes wrong?

It's all very well having a secure financial system but that, in itself, doesn't protect you if the person you're sending money to turns out to be dodgy. You could legitimately use PayPal to buy an item through an encrypted transaction, only to discover the recipient doesn't intend to send the goods or ends up shipping something of poor quality.

In such a situation, PayPal should have your back thanks to Buyer Protection. We say “should” because not all transactions qualify (you're not covered if you buy a vehicle, real estate, industrial machinery or pre-paid cards, for instance, nor items that violate PayPal's policies). You also need to open a dispute in the PayPal Resolution Center within 180 days of the purchase or payment but it's a nice safeguard, nonetheless. If PayPal finds in your favor, you will be refunded.

Am I protected if I send money to friends and family?

PayPal can be used to transfer money to people you know using the PayPal Friends and Family option. The transactions are just as safe as if you're making a purchase online and they don't attract any fees (unless you're sending international personal transactions).

You may, however, encounter sellers asking you to pay for items and services using the Friends and Family option. Don't! Sellers will be trying to avoid paying PayPal's business transaction fees and while they may tempt you by offering a small discount, be aware that you won't have Buyer Protection. Those transactions should instead always be conducted via the PayPal Goods and Services option.

What if I am selling something?

Again, the transaction will be safe and secure — you won't see the buyer's financial details and they certainly won't see your's. PayPal will protect you if payment has been sent without authorization from a hacked account, for instance, or if a buyer claims they did not receive the item you sent. So long as you have proof that you sent an item and that it was received, you're eligible for Seller Protection.

Should I use a credit card with PayPal?

If you can, yes. Although credit card protections don't apply if you're using them via online payment systems such as PayPal, if anything does go wrong, you at least have the option of seeing if your credit card company can help. 

By using a credit card, you are also distancing PayPal from accounts that potentially contain a large amount of cash. You'll likely find it easier to sort unauthorized payments made through a credit card than you would if someone ended up taking money from your bank account. And money swiped out of a bank account could land you in a heap of trouble if it leads to missed mortgage payments and so on.

How can I make using PayPal even safer?

You should also use a complex password rather than something easily guessable and safeguard your login further by registering your mobile phone to use a PayPal Security Key — otherwise known as two-factor authorization. When you login to your PayPal account, a PIN will be sent to your mobile and this adds an extra layer of security.

Regularly check the email address associated with PayPal, too. Emails are sent whenever a transaction is made and if anything looks odd, you can report it with a view to be refunded.

Finally, try not to use PayPal on a public WiFi network unless you are using the best VPN service. In general, it's still going to be really difficult for someone to hack your PayPal account but it's better to be safe than sorry (and to be wary of public WiFi in general).

Two types of transactions can be made through PayPal. Payments are either classified as “goods and services” or “friends and family.” As the names suggest, the two are for different things. PayPal's friends and family option is only used to make payments to known contacts whom you trust. It's a way to send money to personal accounts while keeping costs to a minimum. On the other hand, goods and services is for those buying from a business or a complete stranger selling something via an online marketplace.

PayPal has removed the option to send a “friends and family” payment to a business account. You’ll only be able to send “goods and services” payments to ensure you receive the appropriate purchase protections. But before we get onto that, here’s how to use PayPal goods and services. 

How do I use PayPal goods and services? 

The steps are pretty similar whoever you’re paying, with the only difference between the two lying in the penultimate step. 

1. Log in to your PayPal account. 

2. Click “Send & Request” on the navigation bar at the top of the screen.

3. Enter the phone number, contact name or email address of the person you’re sending money to, or select a contact that's already attached to your account.

4. Enter the payment amount, and add a note. Then press Continue.

5. Select “Paying for an item or service” in the pop-up that appears. 

6. Choose where the money is coming from. Check through the details, then when you’re sure everything is all okay, press submit to send your money through. 

How much does it cost to use PayPal goods and services? 

When you send/receive money for goods and services through PayPal, you’ll be charged a 2.99% fee. International commercial transactions incur an additional 1.5% charge as well. 

On the other hand, within the United States (or within the U.K.), personal payments between friends and family are free via PayPal, as long as you’re paying directly from your PayPal balance or bank account.

You can find up-to-date details of the merchant fees you’ll be charged for receiving money here.

Do I have to use PayPal goods and services for marketplace deals? 

Previously, you had the option to use friends and family to pay for something bought on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, although it was against PayPal’s terms of use. However, that option has been removed. PayPal has made the decision to limit friends and family payments to personal accounts only, in order to ensure business payments are covered by PayPal’s Purchase Protection. This way, when you make a business payment, you’ll be guarded against any potential damages or losses. 

New to PayPal? Here’s how to set up a PayPal account.  

When making a payment with PayPal, you can choose whether your payment is for “friends and family” or “goods or services.”

If your payment is going to someone you know personally, you should use the “friends and family” option. However, if you plan on purchasing something from an unknown seller, make sure to use “goods and services.”

Since using the friends and family option typically carries no fees, you may be tempted to use it when making a business transaction. However, this means you sacrifice purchase protections associated with goods and services payments. To combat this, PayPal announced they are ending fee-free friends & family payments for business accounts.  

How do I use PayPal friends and family? 

 Using PayPal friends and family is pretty straightforward. Here are the steps to complete a payment. 

1. Log in to your PayPal account. 

2. Click “Send & Request” on the navigation bar at the top of the screen.

3. Enter the phone number, contact name or email address of the person you’re sending money to, or select a contact that's already attached to your account.

4. Enter the payment amount, and add a note if you like. Then press Continue.

5. In the pop-up box, select “Sending to a friend.” 

6. You may now be prompted to choose a bank account to pay from. Finally, you'll get one final chance to check all the details are correct before you press submit and send your money on its way. 

How much does it cost to send a PayPal friends and family payment? 

Within the United States (or within the U.K.), personal payments between friends and family are free via PayPal, as long as you’re paying directly from your PayPal balance or bank account. If you’re paying via debit or credit card, there’s a “small charge” of 2.90% + a fixed fee. 

International payments between friends and family do, however, have a fee attached. It’s charged to the sender and comes in at 5% of the sent amount, up to a maximum of $4.99.The minimum international fee is $0.99. 

Can you use a PayPal friends and family payment to buy things from strangers? 

Previously, the answer would be yes, but you really, really shouldn’t — and not just because it’s against PayPal’s user agreement. However, PayPal has recently made changes so you will non longer be able to submit friends and family payments to business accounts anymore. 

Previously, the lack of fee made it a tempting option for sellers to use instead of ‘goods and services,’ but scammers can use this approach to take the money and run, knowing that you’ll have no recourse to open a fraud claim with PayPal. If you sign off someone as a friend or family member, PayPal reasons, then you’re vouching for the contact and therefore you’re not entitled to extra protections.

Therefore, PayPal has made the decision to limit friends and family payments in order to ensure business payments are covered by PayPal’s Purchase Protection. This way, when you make a business payment, you’ll be guarded against any potential damages or losses. 

 For more information on PayPal, check out our guide on how to set up a PayPal account.

It's well worth knowing how to set up a PayPal account if you want to make payments or transfer money online. As one of the most popular online payment systems, PayPal lets you send money between friends, family and business associates without having to share your financial details. It also lets you pay for items.

Although you must connect a bank account or credit card to PayPal, the information is encrypted to keep it safe. When you buy an item online using the service, you only need to log into PayPal to carry out the transaction. The online store never gets to see your card details, CCV number or bank account information.

As well as adding a layer of security, PayPal also offers additional peace of mind. It has buyer protection safeguards, refunding the cost of items if they do not arrive and protecting you against fraud. It also allows you to spread payments. 

There are some fees involved, but that is mainly if you're dealing with a business. Money can be sent between friends and family for free. You can also transfer money from PayPal into your bank account. Here are step-by-step instructions for how to set up a PayPal account via a web browser on your computer. 

How to set up a PayPal account in a browser

1. Go to PayPal's account selection page and choose the kind of account that you want to set up by clicking the button next to either Personal Account of Business Account. Then click Next.

2. Indicate where you live by using the drop-down menu to select your country or region. Again, click Next.

3. Now type your mobile number. This number will be used to receive a confirmation text and it will be linked to your account so ensure you enter it accurately.

4. Once you have received a text from PayPal on your cellphone, enter the confirmation code in the boxes. If you have not yet received a code, click Send Code Again.

5. Now you need to set up your profile. Enter your email address and your legal name. You also need to create a password. Indicate whether or not you want to stay logged in and click Next.

6. Now you need to add an address. Enter your street address — one which corresponds to your bills — and you may be able to find where you live from the list of suggestions. Otherwise, fill in each of the boxes manually and confirm you are at least 18 years old. Click Agree and Continue.

7. You are going to be prompted to add a debit or credit card to your account. Either click Get Started if you are looking to buy an item from a website or click Try It Now if you are going to be sending money to friends or family. You can also click Not Sure? Add card to use later. In all three instances, you will be taken to the same page.

8. And this is it. Add your debit or credit number and select the card type. Now type the expiration date, security code and billing address. When you have accurately completed these fields, click Link Card.

If you would rather connect your PayPal account to your bank account, click Link A bank instead and fill in the required details.

9. It's a good idea to explore the PayPal dashboard before you do anything with your new account. You will reach the dashboard whenever you go to paypal.com and sign in.

Click the Notifications icon at the top of the page and you will see any actions that you need to complete. Typically, for new accounts you will be prompted to link a credit card if you did not previously do that. 

How to create a PayPal business account

The process for setting up a PayPal business account is similar to a personal account. You will, however, need to give details of your business and either enter your employer ID number or, if you are sole proprietor, your social security number. You also need to enter personal information such as your date of birth for verification purposes.

At this stage, it's also worth knowing what PayPal friends and family is — and how it works.

Once you've finished setting up your PayPal account, you might want some ideas for what to spend your money on — in which case, head to our Best Amazon deals, Best Buy deals and sales, Best cheap TV deals and Best Apple deals for inspiration.

Income tax season is here, and for many filing online, the choice often boils down to H&R Block vs. TurboTax. And with good reason: Among the best tax software, both are at the top with comprehensive offerings and excellent service — including the ability to have your returns done by a tax pro.

H&R Block and TurboTax each have areas of strength and weaknesses. We specifically focus this deep dive on their respective online platforms, to see which is the best for you. 

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Price

Both H&R Block and TurboTax offer downloadable software for those who prefer to keep their data locally as opposed to in the cloud, but for the purposes of this story, we’re focusing on their online offerings.

H&R Block and TurboTax start with free tiers of service and scale up to a self-employed package. If you start at the wrong level and answer a question that you have a particular circumstance, such as investment income or self-employed deductions, the software will prompt you to change your service tier.

The free versions cover federal and state filing for basic tax situations and little else — no deductions, investments or multiple sources of income — with free federal and state filing included. 

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Free tier

TurboTax can handle ordinary interest income in its free tiers, and it has a wider swatch of tax pro assistance services available – and those services are free until 3/31. They go up significantly after that. If you have unemployment income, though, you’ll need to look at H&R Block’s free service, or at one of the other free services we’ve reviewed, such as Cash App Taxes or FreeTaxUSA.

H&R Block vs. Turbotax: Paid services compared

H&R Block

H&R Block Deluxe costs $55 and includes all the features found in the free version, plus a way to optimize donation deductions, real estate taxes and mortgage interest.

H&R Block Premium ($75) handles cost-basis calculations and income from stocks, rental properties, and other investments, including cryptocurrency 

The H&R Block Self-Employed tier ($110) provides full-on expense support for freelancers, contractors and other small business owners, including home office, depreciation and vehicle expenses. This is the way to go to support your side gig, be it driving for Uber or something else.

TurboTax

TurboTax Deluxe ($59) tier handles a wide range of standard needs, including support for  deductions, real estate taxes and mortgage interest.

TurboTax Premier ($89) covers stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency and other investments; rental property income and deductions. The TurboTax Self-Employed tier ($119) covers specific freelance and small business scenarios. including ride-hailing, online sales and services and other business income and expense needs.

In most cases, H&R Block's pricing will cost you a little less than a comparable tier from TurboTax will, though both services regularly offer discounts, although the deepest discounts are typically early in the tax season.

In most cases, H&R Block's pricing will cost you a little less than a comparable tier from TurboTax will, though both services regularly offer discounts.

Winner: H&R Block

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: State tax returns

H&R Block continues its trend of being the more cost-effective platform. The free H&R Block tier includes filing state taxes for free; all other tiers cost $37 per state, and that fee includes e-filing. The state price is the same even if you use H&R Block’s Online Assist.

TurboTax’s structure is similar, but the company charges more for e-filing state returns ($59; $54 to $69 for Live Assisted or Live Full Service). Like H&R Block, the Basic tier includes one free state e-file. 

Winner: H&R Block

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Tax pro assistance

Confounded by the new tax laws? Troubled by how to enter your crypto transactions? Tax professionals are standing by and ready to help you out from the madness abyss. Live support is stronger and more affordable than ever, but the extent of that support depends upon which brand — and what level of service — you pay for.

Both services offer access to tax professionals — typically a CPA or Enrolled Agent (EA) — for unlimited video, phone, chat time and screen-share to discuss your tax challenges. Both services also offer tax pro assistance to review your return, but TurboTax includes that feature, while it’s an add-on for H&R Block. Either package lets you upgrade to these tax pro help options at the time of purchase, or as an add-on from within the service. 

H&R Block scales the price of its Online Assist to match the complexity of your service tier: Basic (same as the free tier without Online Assist), $70; Deluxe, $115; Premium, $165; Self-Employed, $195. H&R Block has a second product, Tax Pro Review, but this is sold as an add-on together with Online Assist from within the return; you won’t see this option on H&R Block’s website prior to starting your return. The service is available weekdays from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. CT, and weekends from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

H&R Block also has an option to use a tax pro and have them do your taxes, but it is a hybrid approach. All communication can be virtual, or you can go into a local H&R Block office and see a live tax pro. Unfortunately, to set this up online, you have to enter your zip code and choose a local tax pro online to start the process, extra steps you don’t need to do with the fully virtual TurboTax Live Full Service. H&R Block says it uses your zip code to match you with a tax pro with expertise on your state’s taxes, but that still doesn’t account for why we had to pick a tax pro from a local office before we could move forward.

TurboTax Live Assisted may look like it costs a lot more, but the service includes on-demand or scheduled video, phone, screen sharing and chat help from CPAs, EAs, or tax lawyers; unlimited year-round help; and a free final review of your tax return by a tax pro. TurboTax Live’s chat support is open weekdays from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.

TurboTax Live Full Service matches you to a tax pro who will take your documents and information and complete your return for you while you’re on the call with them. This is really where TurboTax shines: The Live Full Service product has streamlined its intake, matching you to a tax pro based on your return’s complexity, and letting you hand off your tax documents for that pro to handle. This is an efficient and  fully virtual experience, as compared with H&R Block’s hybrid approach.

In addition to TurboTax’s robust online support and community resources, TurboTax Deluxe, Premier, and Self-Employed have access to a built-in virtual assistant and phone, chat and screen-share support with a product specialist. Phone support runs 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.

Winner: TurboTax

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Importing documents

Both H&R Block and Turbotax allow you to start with the mobile app and move to using the browser-based service. This can be handy to jumpstart a return by using your mobile phone to snap a picture of your W-2 to import into service, for example.  

For each service, the first step up from the free level — referred to as the "Deluxe" tier — covers donation and Schedule A (real-estate taxes and mortgage) deductions. For charitable deductions, TurboTax has integration with Intuit’s ItsDeductible product.

H&R Block supports importing investment transactions directly from institutions, and it supports cryptocurrency transactions through importing data from CoinTracker and CoinBase (this wasn’t enabled yet when we tested the service). 

TurboTax can import up to 10,000 transactions from financial institutions. For cryptocurrency, TurboTax can import up to 20,000 transactions from over 30 exchanges, including Coinbase, Robinhood, Binance, and more.

For those who are self-employed, H&R Block calls out support for importing data from some mobile apps, like Stride; TurboTax, as you might expect, can import from Intuit’s QuickBooks, but it has no support for other Intuit apps like Mint.

Winner: TurboTax

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Experience and Interface

H&R Block and TurboTax both offer a friendly, guided experience that walks you through a series of interview questions and prompts you to enter data, rather than exposing you directly to actual, intimidating tax forms. The actual filling out of forms happens behind-the-scenes based on your answers and the data you provide. Both packages let you see the forms before you submit your return.

Because of the natural language, conversational guidance, both of these are fairly easy to navigate — a critical feature for last-minute filers or those who don’t want to pay more for help. Intra-service menus let you move through the process, and revisit things, as needed. Both have responsive design, so you can use them on mobile devices, even though each has an app as well.

That said, if we had to pick between the two services on interface alone, we'd give the nod to H&R Block. Everything about H&R Block’s design approach makes the screens more readable, with bold, large typography and roomy data entry points. 

Even the help resources that appear in the right slide-out pane are well-formatted, which makes it easier to read and comprehend. TurboTax continues to hone its interface, but text can be harder to read  due to the lack of weight, and the interview structure gets repetitive.

Winner: H&R Block

H&R Block vs. TurboTax: Bottom line

H&R Block and TurboTax are well-matched, with both offering a range of products that will help you get your taxes done. Still, TurboTax edges H&R Block for several reasons, in spite of it costing a little more than H&R Block across the board. 

H&R Block has a more pleasing, modern visual aesthetic, with large typography and heavier font weights, and it’s easier to navigate than TurboTax. H&R Block has integrations with financial institutions and can import W-2 forms with ease. Its cryptocurrency support is better than most — and includes a cost basis calculator — but it only connects to CoinTracker. 

TurboTax moves ahead of H&R Block in that it has better automated data import, including a donations estimator and solid cryptocurrency guidance — both in its help and its in-service support for connecting to multiple wallet services. 

But where TurboTax really shines is with its tax pro help. Not only is TurboTax’s pricing structure more clearly presented, but it’s much easier to connect to a tax professional to look over your return and, if necessary, do your taxes for you.  

More from Tom's Guide

• Best tax software 2023
• How to file your taxes online
• Tax deadlines: What you need to know

With stores encouraging shoppers to use contactless payment, knowing how to use Apple Pay is more than just convenient — it's becoming essential. With Apple Pay, you can buy things just by placing a compatible device near a point-of-sale terminal without having to hand over cash or a credit card. 

Apple introduced Apple Pay in 2014, with support for the iPhone first. Apple Pay has since made its way to other devices, including the Apple Watch, Mac and iPad. Want to how to use Apple Pay with an iPhone? That's what we'll focus on here.

• Why you should use Express Transit Pay through Apple Pay
• What are the best iPhones you can buy right now?
• How to apply for the Apple Card

Apple Pay works with most debit and credit cards from leading banks, allowing you to store your credit or debit card info on your iPhone. You can use Apple Pay at millions of brick-and-mortar stores — basically any store showing an Apple Pay or contactless payment logo accepts Apple Pay. With the introduction of Apple Pay Later, these purchases can even be split into four payments over six weeks.

In addition, you can use Apple Pay to verify online purchases or send cash to friends via the Messages app. Transit systems in five U.S. cities support Apple Pay, as do transit operators in Canada, the UK, and China, among other countries. And if you use Apple Card — Apple’s credit card — you can earn 2% back on Apple Pay purchases.

But before you can put Apple Pay to work, you’ve got to set it up first. Here’s how to get started with Apple Pay and how to use your phone to pay for things once you’ve got Apple Pay enabled.

How to use Apple Pay: Set up

You’ll be prompted to enter credit card info for Apple Pay when you fire up your iPhone. But in your excitement to start using your new phone, it's possible that you breezed past this step. No matter — it’s easy to go back and enable Apple Pay or add extra payment cards that you might have skipped over the first time.

1. Open the Wallet app on your iPhone.

2. Tap the plus button in the upper-right corner of the screen.

3. You’ll be prompted to either enter a credit or debit card or apply for an Apple Card. For this step-by-step, we’ll enter a credit or debit card. (This screen is also where you can add transit card information, if you live in a place that supports that feature.)

4. You’ll be taken to a screen to add cards. If you’ve got cards on file from a previous iPhone backup, you’ll be able to add those by entering their CVC. You can also add a different or a new card entirely if this is your first time using Apple Pay.

5. The Wallet app will prompt you to add a credit card in the frame of a view finder so that it can scan in your credit card number. You can also enter your credit card number, expiration data and CRV manually. Apple will confirm all this info with your card issuer and if everything’s OK, the card will be added to your wallet.

You’ll receive a notification when your credit or debit card is ready to use via Apple Pay.

How to use Apple Pay

You can use Apple Pay in a variety of ways, including in apps, on web pages, and to ride trains and subways. But the most common way to use Apple Pay is in stores at a point of purchase in lieu of swiping or dipping a credit or handling over cash. How to use Apple Pay in a store to make contactless payments varies depending on what iPhone you use.

With iPhone X or later

1. Double-click the Sleep/Wake button on the right  side of your iPhone.

2. Select the card you want to use by tapping it, and double-click the Sleep/Wake button when prompted to pay.

3. Glance at your iPhone if you’ve set up Face ID to verify your identity, or enter your PIN or password.

4. Hold your iPhone near the payment terminal. Your payment is complete when you see Done and a checkmark on the screen.

With an iPhone 8 or earlier

1. Place your finger on the Touch ID button on your phone.

2. Place the top of your iPhone near the contactless card reader. Your payment is complete when you see Done and a checkmark on the screen.

Now you're familiar with Apple Pay, check out 15 essential Messages tips every iPhone owner should know to find out how to use the Messages app like a pro, or how to use Focus mode in iOS 15. And take a look at how to use Live Text in iOS 15 to familiarize yourself with copying text.  It could also be worth knowing how to sign documents on iPhone.

Apple dropped a bit of a bombshell into its WWDC 2021 presentation this past June: iOS 15 will let an iPhone or an Apple Watch hold digital versions of the user's house keys, hotel room keys, workplace ID cards and, last but not least, driver's license or other government-issued form of identification.

"With the Apple Wallet app, we set out to replace your physical wallet," said Apple vice president of Wallet and Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey. As Bailey pointed out, Wallet can already "hold" touchless credit cards and transit cards and wireless-key-fob codes for some modern vehicles.

"However, to be fully free of your physical wallet, there's one more thing we need to bring to iPhone, and that's your ID," Bailey said. "So we're bringing identity cards to Apple Wallet."

• iOS 15 release date, beta, supported devices and all the new iPhone features
• The iPhone 13 is coming: Get caught up on all the rumors

"This fall, you'll just scan your driver's license or state ID in participating U.S. states," said Bailey.

Today (Sept. 1), Apple released a list of the first states to sign up for the digital-ID program: Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. Together, those states comprise about 43 million people, or about 13% of the total U.S population.

Apple wouldn't say much else, adding that information about when those states would start implementing the program, and when the TSA would start accepting Apple's ID, "would come at a later date."

Bailey added that Apple was even working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to let digital driver's licenses held on iPhones become acceptable proof of identity to board U.S. domestic flights.

An Apple press release after the presentation referred to "Identity Cards" with specific capitalization, although it wasn't quite clear if that was the official name of the feature. Bailey mostly referred to just "ID."

Convenient or creepy? Security experts weigh in

So is letting your iPhone become your primary means of identification really a good idea? Is that what smartphones are meant to do?

Some of the security and privacy experts we spoke to weren't worried.

"From a usability perspective, I'm stoked," said Patrick Wardle, a well-known Mac hacker and founder of the Objective by the Sea security conference. "[I] hate having to dig out my ID when traveling, and worrying about misplacing it. Having it on one's phone seems like a no-brainer."

"From a risk perspective, a digital ID stored cryptographically on your phone (and in the cloud) is just as, if not more secure, than a physical ID in some ways," said Sean Gallagher, a senior threat researcher at Sophos.

"If your wallet is stolen or lost, you have lost control of your government ID," Gallagher added. "If you lose your phone, at least you can remote delete your wallet along with all the other sensitive information, and it is (or should be ) protected by a passcode."

Yet Thomas Reed, director of Mac and mobile security at Malwarebytes, wasn't so sanguine about the idea of a digital ID.

"Apple has a lot to think about on this front," he told us. "Although I imagine that it is possible for Apple to make these digital IDs secure and private, it's going to be very tricky to get it right."

iPhone as ID Card: It was inevitable

We can see why Apple's new feature could creep some people out. Other digital device and services, including many password managers, already let you store information from your driver's license securely as a backup. 

But this is the first time we've heard of a digital item that can completely replace your physical driver's-license card. Letting your iPhone become your proof of identity seems like uncharted territory. Is Apple replacing the government as the ultimate authority of personal identity?

"I understand the unsettling feelings this evokes, but this was an inevitability," said John Shier, senior security advisor at Sophos. "Millions of people have been using features like Apple Pay and Google Pay without incident for a while ... If the implementation is secure enough to be trusted by banks and card issuers, it legitimizes the technology for other uses."

"I don't think that Apple is replacing or assuming the function of a government agency," Shier added. "They are not holding the data centrally and are not issuing the documents. They are simply providing people with a secure way to digitally store their physical IDs."

Digital IDs are not a new IDea

Digital driver's licenses that you can hold on your smartphone are not a new idea. USA Today wrote about them more than two years ago, reporting that "a dozen states are in various stages of testing mobile or digital driver's licenses that operate on smartphones." 

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) has a page detailing various efforts along such lines around the world. There's even an internationally agreed-upon standard for digital driver's licenses. 

In fact, Apple is kind of playing catch-up here. Qualcomm teased in 2019 that it was working with Google on such a feature for Android phones, and Google this past October confirmed that an API for mobile driver's licenses was built into Android 11. Presumably, that's to let developers create third-party ID apps.

"There are already similar implementations in Europe that are using digital IDs in the place of physical cards," Shier told Tom's Guide. "If the worry is in Apple having access to the data, the fact that it resides solely in the Secure Element should allay those worries."

A single point of failure

It's fair to say that Apple may be out in front of Google on this issue now. Which gets to the next question: Do you want your iPhone (and maybe soon your Android phone) to be the crux of your entire identity? Do you want it to hold ALL the keys — to your house, to your car, to your office, to your life? Do you want to create a single point of failure?

"You mean like carrying a purse?" asked Melanie Ensign, founder of the security and privacy communications firm Discernible, Inc. "It doesn't significantly change the current authentication mechanisms/vectors themselves, just speeds up the process."

"When you hand your physical ID to a TSA agent, what do they do with you?" she asked. "Put it in a scanner/camera! Apple Wallet merely moves the scanning process to much earlier in the journey."

Apple's goal is to make itself indispensable to its users, and Apple Wallet's new functions create further customer lock-in to the Apple ecosystem. If your apps, your email, your credit cards and now your very ability to drive a car and board a plane are tied to Apple, it will be that much more difficult to switch to another smartphone platform. 

"I don't know that I'm that worried about the technology itself, but I'm concerned that people might come to rely on it too much," Shier said. "If you routinely leave your house without your physical wallet and keys, what happens when your phone's battery dies on your way to the airport?"

On the other hand, he pointed out, "if you ever lost your wallet while travelling, having these things on your phone would at least provide some way to pay for items and identify yourself until you managed to get home and have the documents replaced."

Can you hack a digital ID?

Bailey said in her presentation that all these valuable documents and digital authorization keys will be held in the Secure Enclave hardware chip on an iPhone. 

It's pretty hard to hack those, but it's less difficult to hack iOS in general, and if the iPhone's screen can display the driver's license, then another app might be able to see it. 

Let's look at this practically. If your smartphone, your house keys, your car keys and your driver's license are all be one item, then if your iPhone is lost or hacked (it does happen), then you might be in serious trouble. 

Despite this, Wardle is calm.

"From a privacy point of view, I'd still sleep well at night, as the physical security of iOS is quite impressive," he told Tom's Guide. 

"If my iPhone gets stolen, sure it has my 'digital soul' [with] all the things (and now maybe even IDs?), but unless you're the FBI with $1M+ you're not getting access to them. ... To a thief, it'd just be a relatively useless paper weight at that point."

That might depend on how exactly the thief gets the phone. Gallagher wondered about "social engineering methods combined with technical methods" that could "allow a digital wallet to be picked."

"It’s just much more unlikely if you follow basic phone privacy measures," Gallagher said. "But I can envision someone convincing a person to unlock their phone and then snatch it from their hands and run."

Like Wardle, Shier is not worried about the technical aspects, and believes that there's an advantage to Apple doing this instead of a less capable organization.

"I think the security and privacy aspects of this are proven and solid," he told us. "It mostly comes down to individual users' comfort with using digital representations of items they've only ever used in physical form." 

"In some respects," Shier added, "I'd rather see this initiative led by a company, who thus far seems to be on the right side of privacy and security, rather than leaving it to individual local, state, or federal governments who don't have a great track record with either."

What about showing your Apple ID card to police?

Then there are more practical matters. Reed wonders what will happen when a cop pulls you over and all you've got to show is a digital driver's license.

That procedure "generally involves handing over my license and proof of insurance, which the police officer takes back to his car," Reed pointed out to Tom's Guide.

"How is this going to work with a digital driver's license? I'm certainly never going to be comfortable with handing over an unlocked phone to anyone, including a police officer," he said. "Apple will need to find a way to secure the driver's license, or any other critical piece of identification, such as an insurance card."

Police generally need a warrant to get a person to reveal a PIN or a passcode, but some U.S. courts have ruled that a cop can force you to unlock your phone with a fingerprint. Either way, it might be best if Apple develops a way to transmit the ID data without unlocking the phone.

"Many people would be quite hesitant, and rightly so, in handing their phone to a police officer or TSA agent," Shier said. "Being able to tap your phone on a receiver that then displays the information to the requesting party would be a good idea."

Will Apple's ID cards make it easier to create fakes?

As Apple described the procedure, all you need to do to import your driver's license into Wallet is to scan it with your iPhone. If that's all there really is to it, then are teenagers all across America going to print out fake IDs at home and import them into Wallet so that they can drink at bars?

Or, as Reed pointed out, could you even steal someone's identity with an iPhone?

"Someone could very easily scan a driver's license that doesn't belong to them or scan a fake ID," he told us. "How is Apple going to validate that the license is truly yours, and that it's valid? Will this become a new avenue for identity theft or creation of false identities?"

It's possible that states are already building safeguards into their physical drivers' licenses. 

"If this includes a photo of the barcode, it's much harder to fake," Ensign said. "We already use QR codes for authentication all the time, plus if it's connected to any other data on your iPhone, it's much better authentication than a physical ID card alone."

"I don't think it's Apple's responsibility" to prevent the creation of fake IDs, said Shier. "If the issuing agency has made it too easy to forge a document, then they should reconsider how they can improve the document's security features. They could even work with technology companies to embed anti-forgery mechanisms into the documents that would be recognized as legitimate by Apple."

A long-term privacy game

Ensign said that the introduction of Wallet digital IDs puts the long game that Apple has been playing regarding privacy and trust into greater perspective.

"It becomes increasingly more obvious why Apple pushed privacy so hard in everything it said for the last several years, with enough action behind it to reap the reputation value," she said.

"They knew this was coming, and needed public trust to make it work," Ensign added. "It was a long-term bet, one that any less patient company could never pull off."

With thorough social media monitoring and identity insurance, Identity Guard is an inexpensive alternative to other ID protection services that are all-encompassing, and can be a little stifling. Its plans are reasonably priced and include security goodies, like two-factor authentication and a password manager.

On the downside, the entry level subscriptions don’t include credit monitoring for early detection of fraud and none of the plans come with malware protection or access to a VPN. Finally, the best they do is annual delivery of credit reports. 

If all you care about is the basics of ID protection and insurance, Identity Guard can be economical protection that does just enough. Our Identity Guard Ultra review will help you decide if this is the best identity theft protection service for your needs.

Identity Guard Ultra: Costs and what’s covered

There are three Identity Guard plans that offer a variety of ID protection services, from basic to advanced. The Value plan is among the cheapest ID protection services at around $9.00 per month (or $54 per year) and includes the essentials. In addition to the Identity Guard Web browser extension for Chrome, data breach notifications, high-risk transaction monitoring and dark web monitoring, the plan includes a pot of $1 million of identity insurance. Identity Guard Value plan has a password manager, but doesn’t show any of your credit scores.

The $20 Total plan (or $120 annually) adds single bureau credit scores that are updated monthly from Equifax but also has monitoring of all three major credit agencies for the early signs of abuse. By contrast, the Ultra plan I subscribed to tops out at $30 per month (or $180 yearly) and shows scores for all three credit agencies but also includes credit reports but the annual frequency is a disappointment. The protection includes monitoring of bank accounts, credit and debit cards as well as sex offender checking, address changes and home title alerts. It also includes an Experian credit lock button.

While Identity Guard is not rated by the Better Business Bureau, its parent, Aura, got an A+, showing that it is highly regarded as an identity protection service. 

Identity Guard Ultra: How we tested

In the late summer of 2022, I signed up for the Identity Guard Ultra identity protection service. I went through the installation process and paid for it with a credit card; later, Tom’s Guide reimbursed me. I checked in with the service several times a week using a variety of computers to monitor my credit scores, respond to alerts, look into the transaction monitors. 

I had some startup problems with the Identity Guard app but after some tech support help it worked well. I cancelled the service after three months of use. 

Identity Guard Ultra: Credit scores and identity monitoring

While the Identity Guard Value plan lacks any credit agency scoring, the Ultra plan has scores from the three bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. If you get the Ultra plan, you do need to scroll to the bottom of the Credit page to see them, but it’s worth the effort. 

On the downside, all are VantageScore 3.0 ratings based on each bureau’s data. They are not the more popular FICO ratings that banks and loan providers actually use to assess creditworthiness. 

Identity Guard provides monitoring for all three agencies as well as the full credit reports. I was able to see my reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion but they are provided annually, something they are obligated by law to provide for free. There isn’t a way to buy an instant report for any of the credit bureaus in an identity emergency.

While the Ultra service keeps an eye on court records, bankruptcy proceedings and home title changes, it also has transaction monitoring for credit card, bank account as well as retirement and investment savings. It lacks the ability to monitor investments, like retirement accounts, however. The service can alert you if a new account has been opened in your name but not if someone has absconded with your identity to take out a payday loan. 

Meanwhile, Identity Guard Ultra scans the dark web for instances of your personal data and goes the extra online mile by looking into chat rooms to see if your name is showing up too often. It can also let you know if a registered sex offender moves in near you but lacks a map to show their location.

In addition to monitoring your social media presence online, the Identity Guard service looks for potential vulnerabilities that might lead to an identity crisis. They include evaluating your ID theft risks moment by moment.

Identity Guard Ultra: Insurance and services

As is the case with many of its ID theft competitors, Identity Guard includes $1 million in insurance. The policy is underwritten by the ever-present AIG.

The insurance covers the basics for things like monetary theft and fraud due to an identity take-over as well as incidentals that might come up like travel or lost work. The plan pays for getting new documents, such as a driver’s license, a passport as well as a new Social Security card and number. More to the point, the insurance can help pay for specialists, like accountants, lawyers and investigators to get to the bottom of the breach and fix it. 

The company promises to have a single agent available day or night to handle your claim, from start to finish. It features an Experian CreditLock up front with the current score, making it one of the easiest ways to freeze your credit in an emergency. 

Identity Guard Ultra: Notifications and alerts

The Identity Guard Ultra plan has a good assortment of alerts available, though they are balanced so as not to overwhelm you with loads of minor notifications. They can be received via the Alerts section of the browser interface or through the mobile app as well as by email or text message, although you’ll have to manually set up that last option. The company is working on adding WhatsApp and phone call notifications to the alert mix.

The service can warn about someone making an address change for you as well as if anyone has used your health insurance policy. As far as the financial monitoring goes, thresholds can be set so you’re not alerted to every transaction. It can also alert you if a duplicate transaction has been logged.

During the three month evaluation, Identity Guard delivered four alerts that concerned a couple large payments and an IRS identity verification of my identity that others missed.

Identity Guard Ultra: Setup

Setting up Identity Guard coverage started at the company’s web site. I clicked on “Start My Membership,” and picked the Ultra plan for individuals. After entering my email account, password, name and address, I typed in my personal information: phone number, date of birth and my Social Security number.

Next, I paid with a credit card; that’s the only choice because the service doesn’t accept PayPal. Then, I clicked “Complete Order” and the account was set up. I logged in but my work wasn’t done. At the Dashboard, I needed to verify my information with six challenge questions about loans and addresses to open the Alerts and Credit. It worked for the Alerts section, but my scores and credit report weren’t working.

After talking with an Identity Guard technician, I was told to wait and see if the scores showed up. A week later she called back to tell me that the servers had the wrong Social Security number. She quickly canceled the account and I re-enrolled. Now, I was set, or so I thought.

At first, I couldn’t log into the Identity Guard app, but later everything started working with Identity Guard’s new app. All the data travels over the internet in an encrypted format and is also encrypted on the company’s servers.

As is the case with many of its competitors, Identity Guard has two levels of support. In the event of an identity crisis, there are agents waiting 24/7 to help freeze your credit and start the identity restoration process.

All other items, including questions about the products and how to use the interface, are covered from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Eastern time) from Monday through Friday or between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. There’s a page that has the phone number and a place to send an email to them.

There’re lots of explanatory FAQs and do-it-yourself articles on Identity Guard’s support site. Happily, the tech support line is listed at the top of the browser-based interface.

Identity Guard Ultra: Interface and utilities

Identity Guard covers the bases well with an interface that loads quickly and is one of the most recently redesigned of the bunch. Less crowded and more visually appealing with larger elements, it’s sprinkled with helpful illustrations. The Dashboard from the last generation has been replaced by the Overview page, which worked well with an HD screen, but the browser needed to be zoomed to 50% to take in all of the components. 

Above the welcome message, Identity Guard reassures with “Monitoring is active,” while the seven boxes below have the plan’s active elements. The Transactions portion keeps an eye on your bank, credit card and investment accounts. At the same time, Credit has the current Equifax VantageScore 3.0 rating along with a monthly score tracker. A level below offers access to credit report data.

If you scroll to the bottom of the Credit page, you’ll be rewarded with access to your scores from Experian and TransUnion. It’s well hidden but worthwhile.

Not surprisingly, the Passwords section has access to the included password manager that works with the Identity Guard Web browser extension to help protect your online personna. All your favorite websites can be included for quick and secure log-ins. On the downside, it only works with the Chrome browser.

Meanwhile, the Identity category has everything from data broker records to dark web scanning to account and public records. Oddly, the next three boxes for antivirus, VPN and covering other family members are grayed out with the notation, “Not included in plan”. Think of them as areas for future growth for Identity Guard – a good sign.

Overall, the interface is easy to figure out and work with. Up top, the Features section has just the plan’s active elements. Next to it is Benefits, where the plan’s attributes are explained. Happily, the tech support box has a link to the tech crew as well as a phone number.

There’s an alert bell in the upper right for notifications but it doesn’t swing or make a chime when there’s something that needs your attention. To its right is your personal account information including alert preferences.

After the month-long kerfuffle over not being able to log into the app, it worked fine. The home page shows alerts and transactions followed by the credit score. Incidentally, using a phone or tablet’s browser worked well too.

Identity Guard Ultra: Cancellation

Ending my relationship with Identity Guard needed to be done over the phone with one of the company’s technicians. There’s no online way to do it. It took about six minutes with the operator trying to keep me as a customer. I received an email confirmation saying my account was canceled within minutes.

Identity Guard review: Verdict

With the approach of providing just enough protection at an attractive, reasonable price, Identity Guard includes the expected (credit monitoring, $1 million in ID insurance and data breach alerts) but reserves credit reports to annual events. There’s social media monitoring, a password manager and two-factor authentication but none of the Identity Guard plans include access to a VPN or malware scanning software. At $300 a year, it’s an alternative to more smothering plans.

The new, redesigned Google Pay app arrived on the scene in late 2020 and could be a life-changer in a couple of ways. For those who prioritize convenience in their finances, Google Pay could replace Venmo, Quicken, Splitwise and your plastic credit cards – handling and understanding your everyday financial transactions just got simpler and safer. 

And for those who have some concerns about this one tech behemoth knowing as much about your money as they do your search habits? Google Pay could be the thing that has you finally throwing your phone in a lake and heading to a bunker. 

Before you fully commit to either option, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to use Google Pay —  and of course, we’ll give you the concrete steps you can take to get Google Pay working for you.

What is Google Pay?

No surprise here — Google Pay is kind of everything. As the latest player in the online wallet game, Google Pay really does replace the contents of that tattered billfold, moving everything to the one item we never leave behind: Our phones. 

Google Pay is a quick way to:

• Make Payments. Google Pay offers the features you need to pay your friends or service providers (just as with PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle), divide the check (as with Splitwise or Splittr) and buy stuff at larger businesses (at either a physical counter or an online checkout). 
• Save and earn money. Google Pay consolidates and facilitates the rewards programs you already have and offers a new rewards program as incentive to use Google Pay. 
• Get insights. Google Pay lets you slice and dice your spending so that you can make smarter decisions about it. 

Who accepts Google Pay? 

People and services in the U.S. and India: Interpersonal payments are, as of this writing, available in the U.S. and India. 

Online retailers at “participating websites” in most countries in the world. 

Point-of-purchase payments for those with Android phones (see below) at over a million stores in the U.S., U.K., and other countries. Wherever you see the contactless payment icon – you can use Google Pay.  

Does Google Pay work on iPhone? 

Yes, but not fully. Google is jumping OSes with Google Pay, a sure sign that the company is gunning for full-on ubiquity in the financial space.  Currently, payment of friends and family is available for both Apple and Android users, but point-of-purchase payment is currently possible only for those with Android phones. 

So, any U.S.-based Android user is well positioned to take full advantage of the Google Pay ecosystem. For anyone else, Google’s made it easy to check feature-by-feature availability. 

Google Pay account: How do you set it up? 

Getting up and running takes just a couple of steps:

1. Go to wherever get your Android or iOS apps, and download Google Pay. (In the Apple Store, choose the pre-redesigned version still exists and is marked “old app”. Look for "Google Pay: Save, Pay, Manage" to get the new app.) 
2. Once you have the app, you’ll need to connect a bank or a credit card. Then, press “Payment” at the bottom of the app screen. The app will walk you through setup, and will ensure you verify your identity.

Note: You can get going with payments with just one financial connection – your bank or PayPal login, or a credit card. But for real spending insights, eventually you’ll want to take the time to tell Google Pay about all the credit cards you use. 

Is Google Pay safe? 

The common theme for all e-wallets is that they’re safer than actual wallets. How? 

For starters, there’s fewer physical parts to lose. But going a bit deeper, an e-wallet like Google Pay is also safer than swiping your card, because Google Pay never provides a retailer with your credit-card number. Rather, it provides the retailer with a token containing your bank information. So if that retailer gets hacked, none of your info will be at risk. 

At point of purchase, Google Pay works with “near-field communication” (NFC) technology – the same technology that powers contactless payments worldwide, which is why you can use Google Pay wherever you see the contactless symbol. Just like with an online purchase, NFC doesn’t pass your card info along – just encrypted tokens. 

And for those who think of safety not just in terms of data transmission, but also about germs? It’s worth noting that Google Pay at point of purchase is 100% contactless – no cards changing hands, and no machines to touch but the one that is already yours. 

All this security might cost some convenience for some: You’ll need to have your automatic screen lock turned on to use Google Pay.

What is Google Pay Rewards? 

Google Pay Rewards is, for now anyway, the huge carrot with which Google looks to be growing its user base. Google has teamed up with hundreds of businesses and is reaching into its own deep pockets to provide you a financial incentive for using Google Pay and for getting others signed up.  

Once I was in the system, reward opportunities just kept coming at me – in the app whenever I opened it, in my Gmail account, and of course, a whole new set of ads when I’m just consuming news online. 

How does Google Pay help with saving and spending? 

Google Pay might be just the ticket for anyone who’d like to understand their spending but doesn’t want to go full Mint/Quicken with the best personal finance software. Google Pay shapes its insights by payee (“How much have I paid on my student loan so far this year? How much do I spend at my local pub?”) as well as by category.

Google Pay is also flexible. Your question “What did I spend on food last month?” can pivot on food overall, giving you the info about grocery stores, restaurants and any other obvious food item that shows up on a credit-card bill, or just show what you spend dining out. 

How do you send and receive money with Google Pay? 

Just tap the Send button at the bottom of the screen. The app will ask whether you want to pay or receive money, and you’ll follow the simple instructions from there to enter the person (by phone number, email address, or contact) and amount.  

Google makes a big show of insisting someone doesn’t need to use Google Pay in order to receive money, and technically, it’s right. However, when I tried to send using the Payment button, the app created a sales-pitch text to send to the contact. The trick to sending without recruiting is to hit the “Send” button – not the “Payment” one. It’s a frustrating hiccup in an otherwise glossy user experience.  

Should you use Google Pay? 

To consolidate everything you use to spend your money, earn rewards while doing it and gain actionable insights around your behaviors, Google Pay really is a one-stop financial shop, replacing myriad existing applets. But only you can determine how you feel about Google knowing even more about you.

What did I decide? I’m going to keep using Google Pay for three months. At that point, the app has promised to ask again whether I want it to provide the insights for which it needs to look deep inside my data; I might or might not say yes.

The battle between Venmo vs PayPal isn't truly much of a fight, since both mobile payment apps are part of the same company. PayPal bought Venmo in 2013 but kept it as a separate entity. 

The digital wallet apps are very similar. They both easily and securely transfer money between bank accounts and process credit card transactions. They're also free for personal use. But there are key differences; for instance, PayPal now offers business financing options, like lines of credit.

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PayPal is a pioneer in the online payment space. It was founded in 1998 specifically to handle online commerce, bought by eBay, then spun off into a separate company.

Venmo began in 2009 and targeted everyday, personal payments. The app also has a social component in its newsfeed of transactions, which can be shared publicly or with a network of friends or restricted via privacy settings. Venmo was acquired by Braintree in 2012, then Braintree was acquired by PayPal a year later.

Some people only use Venmo, others only use PayPal, while many give and receive money on both. Venmo has become especially popular with younger users and the brand has become a verb ("Venmo me"). 

Here's our guide to the Venmo vs PayPal and which money app might be the best fit for you.

Venmo vs PayPal: At a glance

Venmo vs PayPal: Payments and limits

Venmo and PayPal allow users to transfer money using their account balance, bank accounts and credit/debit cards. 

New Venmo userss have an initial person-to-person sending limit of $299.99. Once their identity is confirmed, that increases to a weekly rolling limit of $4,999.99.

Since PayPal is integrated into many e-commerce sites, the transaction limit is higher at $10,000.

Venmo vs Paypal: Fees

It's free to sign up for either a Venmo or PayPal account and the mobile apps are also free to download.

Both services offer free account balance and bank transfers. But they both charge a fee for credit card purchases: PayPal's is 2.9% of each credit/debit card transaction plus $0.30 (in the U.S.) and Venmo's is 3% for credit card transactions (none for debit card purchases).

Venmo and PayPal both charge for instant transfers, as well. Venmo has a one-business day withdrawal window, while PayPal's is one to two business days. For instant transfers, both services add a 1% fee with a maximum of $10.

Venmo vs Paypal: Availability and platforms

Venmo is available only on mobile via iOS and Android apps. It's limited to the U.S. Meanwhile, PayPal is available on iOS, Android and by web browser in more than 200 countries and 25 currencies.

Venmo vs PayPal: Security and protection

Both Venmo and PayPal have secure, encrypted transactions and monitor accounts  for fraudulent activity. 

Venmo clearly positions itself for transferring money, person-to-person, between friends and acquaintances. The service states this on their site: "Venmo should only be used to transact with people you know. Do not use Venmo to pay or receive payments from people you don’t know, especially if the payment involves the purchase or sale of a good or service."

Venmo does not offer buyer or seller protection, which it also states in their policies: "Venmo does not offer a buyer or seller protection program for transactions conducted using the Venmo app or Venmo.com, regardless of the nature of the payment (or charge), unless expressly offered to you by Venmo."

Since PayPal is used for e-commerce, it does offer buyer and seller protections (listed here), such as 24/7 monitoring, fraud prevention and dispute resolution.

Venmo vs PayPal: Features

Venmo isn't just an online payment platform; it's part social media. Users can scroll through and comment on a newsfeed of transactions from their Venmo network of contacts and share their own transactions (or not, which they can manage through their privacy settings). 

While PayPal can be used for personal transfers, it offers a ton of features for businesses such as its "Business in a Box" plan that includes payment processing and financial tracking. PayPal also offers business and working capital loans. 

Venmo vs PayPal: Which is the right payment app for you?

Venmo and PayPal are so similar that most people can use either for their regular, everyday money transferring needs. They both link to bank accounts, charge for credit card purchases and offer fast withdrawal times. 

Venmo may be the better fit if you want to make simple transfers to friends, like splitting a restaurant tab or paying your half of the electricity bill. Younger users may like the social aspect of seeing and commenting on their network's transactions.

PayPal is the best choice for transferring large amounts of money and sending money overseas. It's also the more secure option for business purchases and sales since they offer buyer and seller protections. 

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Visa really is everywhere you want to be. It’s not just a marketing slogan, but a cruel fact I learned when I tried to rely solely on my Apple Card during a recent trip to Italy.

I’ve been testing out Apple’s credit card since it launched in August. And that includes taking it overseas to see how this card performs away from the safety of an Apple Store. The verdict? The Apple Card isn’t always the best travel companion, at least when you head overseas.

Apple Card: It just works (sometimes)

When I landed in Rome, I found the ItaliaRail machine and purchased two tickets from the airport to Roma Termini station in the heart of the city. I noticed the tap-to-pay sign, even in my sleep-deprived, jetlagged state. (It may have been noon in Rome, my West Coast-fixed brain was feeling every bit like it was  3 a.m. in California). I pulled out my iPhone, not knowing what to expect. To my surprise, Apple Pay worked — I’ve got the Apple Card set up as my default method of payment — and my first attempt at using the Apple Card in Italy was a success.

My second attempt at using Apple Card was at the Vodafone kiosk in the Fiumicino airport, where I was also able to use Apple Pay. This airport, it seemed, was completely on board with mobile payments.

I tried to stick with Apple Card throughout my vacation — a quick jaunt in Rome and a week in Florence and Tuscany — just to make paying off the trip easy, but it wasn’t as seamless an experience as I had hoped after those early successes, especially when I turned to the physical Apple Card you’re meant to use when mobile payments aren’t an option.

Apple card declines: An investigation

In Florence, there were few tap-to-pay terminals. Even worse, it seemed no one accepted MasterCard, the global payment network used by Apple Card. Almost everywhere I handed over my white titanium Apple Card, from restaurants to museums, the server or customer service agent would invariably return with: “No MasterCard,” and, in some cases, “Your card was declined.”

It was the latter that threw me off, especially when it happened three times in one day at three separate venues. 

“Hmm,” I thought. “Maybe I should’ve put a travel alert on the card.”

I thought Apple had placed a freeze on my spending after a few Italian transactions to prevent fraud. So I opened the Wallet app and selected my Apple Card, then tapped on the ellipses that hides the support contacts at the top right. I decided to send a message to the Apple Card support number about my international woes, but my text didn’t go through. (I forgot that the Vodafone customer service agent had turned off iMessage when I bought an Italian SIM card; otherwise this might have worked.) Then I tried calling the support line, but the automated recording was in Italian. Just as I was about to give up hope and retire my Apple Card for the rest of my trip, I called the support line again — this time using Skype so I could control the language. 

After a brief hold, I was connected with Darnell, an Apple Card specialist with Goldman Sachs and an overall lovely human being. He asked for my last name and the last four digits of my social security number to look up my account (as the card lacks an actual number). Then Darnell said something that took me by surprise: My card hadn’t actually been declined anywhere.

Apple Card: You’re using it wrong

Darnell told me it was possible that retailers and restaurants where it had been “declined” just didn’t accept MasterCard, and didn’t realize Apple Card was a MasterCard at first. 

Another possible explanation: The Apple Card’s magnetic strip is oriented on the flip side of where most credit cards strips are — on the bottom of the rear of the card instead of the top — and isn’t as obvious as most strips. It looks like a silver design element in contrast to the white, which may have confused some merchants.

Because there were no records of declines on my card, the only conclusion I (and Darnell) could come to was that the card had been swiped incorrectly.

This seemed more likely after I handed over the card at a museum in Florence, only to be told that my card was declined. Then I noticed the universal tap-to-pay symbol on the card reader and decided to give Apple Pay a shot. My Apple Card transaction worked instantly. 

Bottom line

After racking up all of those “declines,” I became less inclined to hand over my physical Apple Card while traveling. It added unnecessary time and irritation to every transaction. But my back-up card, the American Express Platinum, was also rejected all over Italy. So the card I used most often during my vacation ended up being an old Chase Sapphire Preferred — a Visa.

I still used Apple Card wherever I saw a tap-to-pay or mobile payments sign to earn the 2% cash back that Apple promises. But I’ve learned my lesson: When traveling internationally, always carry multiple forms of payment. And never leave home without a Visa — just in case.

With the rise of money-transfer apps like Venmo, it’s never been easier for you to send money to your friends. It’s also never been easier to accidentally send money to a total stranger. 

And while Venmo takes certain preventive measures on its end to ensure you’re sending your hard-earned dollars to the right person, its digital financial system — like most — has its risks.

You’ll receive a “Woah there, are you ABSOLUTELY sure?” notice when paying someone you don’t share friends with. But if you have a whopping one mutual contact, Venmo throws its hands up and assumes you know what you’re doing. Well, Venmo, you fail to account for the very common circumstance that is accidentally sending a payment to stranger you happen to have mutual social media connections with. 

Recently, I went to Venmo a friend for covering a lunch bill when I was short. I searched their full name on Venmo, confident the number of mutual friends listed next to the first result handle meant I had the correct user, and sent the payment. When they asked me to Venmo them the next day, I returned to my Venmo transaction history where it shows I did, in fact, pay someone with their name; and who I did, in fact, have mutual friends with. But it was not the person who paid for my burger.

Shame on me not confirming my friend’s handle before paying them, but I knew I wasn’t the first and won’t be the last Venmo user to face this problem. I learned how to resolve it both so I could get my money back and so that I could share what to do when you make the same mistake I did. 

When you find yourself in this situation, your first reaction may be tot call Venmo support, where they’ll hesitate to help you if you’re not prepared. If you check the Venmo FAQs, they give off an anxiety-inducing “what’s done can’t be undone,” vibe. But have no fear, here are your options for fixing a Venmo payment to the wrong person. 

Option 1: Request your money back

Upon realizing you paid the wrong user, request a payment for the exact amount you sent them. In the “What’s it for?” note, admit your error. Add a please or three in there, too. Hopefully they’ll return your payment in a timely manner for the sake of moral decency; but if they haven’t accepted or denied your request after several hours, try reminding them. You can only use the remind feature once per request, so after a day with no response, you might want to cancel the request altogether and send a new one. 

If you have mutual friends with the user, you should also have some luck finding them on Facebook or Instagram. You can attempt to reach them on those platforms in case they have Venmo notifications turned off. 

Option 2: Call Venmo customer service (1-855-812-4430)

If option 1 failed, it’s time to get Venmo customer support involved. They’re not going to let you just ask for money returned, though — they don’t want you cheating your way out of payments by undoing them. You’re going to need to provide your account information, as well as the account information (handle and connected email address) for the person you meant to Venmo.

If customer service is able to verify your provided information, they’ll email the user you accidentally paid, giving them 48 hours to complete your request before automatically sending the funds from their account back to yours. 

As always, be patient and kind with the customer support representative. They have 40 million users to manage. Be grateful they’re helping you fix a mistake you made AND getting your money back. 

Just under 48 hours after calling Venmo support, I received a notification that the stranger had fulfilled my $15 request. So there you have it, internet, good people do exist.

Buying stuff on your iPhone is already pretty easy, especially if you use Apple Pay’s ultra-fast fingerprint authentication. But if you rely on PayPal for your online transactions, as hundreds of millions of people do, now you can link your PayPal account to your Apple ID for speedy transactions.

Apple just added PayPal as a default option for making purchases across Apple’s own services on your iOS device, including iTunes, the App Store, Apple Music, and iBooks. That means you can use PayPal to pay for songs, books, apps, and even your monthly iCloud and Apple Music subscriptions. This extends to purchases made on all Apple devices, including the Apple TV and Apple Watch.

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The good news is that setting up a PayPal account that ties into your Apple ID is super simple, once you figure out where to go.

1. First you have to get to your Apple ID settings on your iPhone, which you can do through the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes or iBooks apps. You can also go to Settings and tap iTunes & App Store.

2. Navigate to Account Settings from the Apple ID page and tap on Payment Information.

3. Select PayPal.

4. Sign into your PayPal account and make sure your PayPal details are up-to-date.

5. Tap Agree & Continue.

Make sure PayPal has a checkmark next to it so you know it’s the new default. Now your PayPal account will be charged for all of your Apple entertainment purchases.

PayPal’s One Touch feature, which allows you to make purchases with your PayPal account without logging in for each transaction, extends to Apple services. Once you make PayPal your default payment option, you don’t have to log in again to verify transactions.

PayPal's Apple ID integration for iOS is now available to users in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Israel, Austria and the Netherlands.

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We've all been there. After a sumptuous dinner with a group of friends, someone generously puts down their card and says everyone else can pay him or her later. From Venmo and Facebook Messenger to Chase Quickpay to straight-up cash, there are many different methods to hand money over to acquaintances.

PayPal's latest offering, a service called PayPal.me, promises to make receiving that money easier, provided all your associates have, or are willing to sign up for, PayPal.

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The Web-based service (there's no mobile app) lets you send a page link that your friends can use to pay you back. Independent service providers, such as personal trainers and tour guides, can also use PayPal.me to request payment. Transactions for goods and services are covered by PayPal's purchase protection.

Here's how you can use PayPal.me to conveniently ask for money.

1. Navigate to PayPal.me.

2. Click Get Started.

3. Enter your desired username. This will appear at the end of the URLs you send to people.

4. Click Grab This Link.

5. Log into your PayPal account or sign up for a new one. When you receive money, it will be credited to your PayPal account, through which you can then pay for other transactions, or request a direct deposit into your bank account.

6. Check that your information is accurate. 

7. Select a theme color. This step is optional.

8. Upload a picture. This is also optional, but useful for helping your friends identify you and reassuring them that they're on the right page.

9. Click Create Your PayPal.me.

You're all set to start asking for money with your new PayPal.me link. To request payment, just send your link (http://www.paypal.me/YOURNAME) to your friends via text, email or IM. If you want to add a specific dollar amount, you can add it to the end of your link (http://www.paypal.me/YOURNAME/YOURAMOUNT).

Although PayPal says on its website, "No one likes to nag," implying that you won't have to nag your friends to return your money, you'll still have to bug them. The service doesn't automatically ping your friends, and you'll have to send the link to people.

The PayPal.me service merely eliminates the need for people to sign into their PayPal accounts and ask for your email address or PayPal username to send money to you. However, for those who handle a lot of transactions and don't want to keep giving out their PayPal IDs, this is a handy tool.

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Several Scandinavian banks have found a better way to do password security. When a customer logs into one of the banks' mobile apps, the app will identify the customer based not only on a PIN or password, but also on the unique pattern of pressure and timing with which the user taps the keys.

When each person types certain characters, he or she tends to type them in a certain way. How hard do you tap the keys? Do you tap the keys in the center, or tend to hit the corners? Do you hesitate at a certain spot mid-sequence? All these little behaviors add up to a recognizable pattern, which software from Stockholm-based technology company Behaviosec can recognize.

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No one likes passwords: They're both hard to remember and easy to steal. But other kinds of verification, including biometric ones such as iris or fingerprint scans, require extra hardware and therefore extra money. That's why Behaviosec's BehavioMobile software may make a difference.

"[The software]'s constantly learning," Behaviosec founder Neil Costigan told Forbes. "The behavior is always watched and your profile is constantly updated."

So far, the technology appears to work: Behaviosec said that in a trial run with Copenhagen-based Danske Bank, BehavioMobile achieved a 99.7 percent success rate.

Eventually, this same technology could one day differentiate users of the same touch device, Costigan told Forbes. For example, if someone else picked up your iPad and started browsing, the pattern of that person's touches could identify him or her.

However, Costigan added that that feature was still far into the future, as it would require much more memory and nuance than today's devices can support.

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Jill Scharr is a staff writer for Tom's Guide, where she regularly covers security, 3D printing and video games. You can follow Jill on Twitter @JillScharr and on Google+. Follow us @tomsguide, on Facebook and on Google+.