Google Shutting Down Wallet Card
google.com
google.com
Until the day you use an ATM with a skimmer. Private machines are a dangerous cesspool.
A cheat code is a nice way of describing how refreshing this is in comparison with the standard bank business model of offering some fairly limited basic checking account as a loss leader, then constantly trying to upsell you on every other kind of product / account imaginable, trying the overdraft protection scam on you, ATM fees, checkbook fees, etc, etc.
It's a wonder they can stay in business.
All great points. The customer service in particular is just outstanding. If there was the opposite experience of calling into Comcast support, it'd be calling into Charles Schwab. They know their stuff and are willing and able to patiently explain things well beyond a script. The yearly free financial consult is awesome, too.
Only annoyance is that some of the procedures require printing out a PDF, filling it in, and physically mailing it or faxing it back. Hopefully that'll be less common in the future.
There's got to be more to it than that, right? There are lots of internet-only banks. I use Ally.
Ally, on the other hand, literally is GMAC.
Yeah it was my school's decision, but that doesn't excuse Bancorp from offering a product that is designed specifically to cheat people out of their money.
Their finances seem relatively healthy: http://www.bankrate.com/rates/safe-sound/memorandums-memos.a...
Basically, imagine the envelope budgeting system as an actual part of your account, combined with a daily savings option. Assuming that you enter your bills in correctly (and it's, erm.. dead simple), you know immediately how much cash you have is safe to spend.
Great CS as well. Actual humans who speak English and who can solve your problems.
Can't recommend them enough.
I'll specify a certain amount like 500 or 1000 dollars to be set aside by any date. It will move over small amounts daily without you noticing. In reality, the money is all in the same account but mentally I do way better with this scheme. I've built an emergency, a car repair fund, saved for AC for my home, and more without seeing a huge loss in my daily balance. It helped me learn to budget and save and that's the value they provide.
If you already are an amazing budgeter, no need to sign up.
(I use Schwab, mostly because my "equity awards" were there and I don't need a physical bank.)
Even when customers do not get refunds on fees, banks are usually very clear about it.
Relevant discussion on Reddit pf
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/3ck2rr/all...
Note how it's JS interface makes it difficult to archive now. Is that because HTML fallback on USENET would be too hard for the googlemachine?
The sooner the better.
Also, they offer a JSON feed of my transactions, which isn't something any of my other banks provide.
It would be nice if they had OAuth support or a formally documented API, but it's still a good start.
I havent used the app but Simple sounds pretty good since you can set multiple "goals" (I think they should call them buckets or envelopes or something).
I rarely need to get cash out of a machine but when I do, I transfer some cash to my Wallet Card and hit the ATM. Thankfully all I really need to do is spend a lunch hour heading over to my credit union to get a plastic card but the Wallet Card was much more convenient and allowed me to grab the funds from various accounts.
I have a Simple account as well but stopped using it when I needed a new card and couldn't prove I'd moved since they wanted a few (printed) bills with my new address but unfortunately none of these are in my name so I couldn't fulfill their request. Maybe it's time to revisit that situation and try to work something out again.
PS: I've never heard of this service either.
Except Google Code Search. I liked Google Code Search. But there's no useful way to hang ads on it. They could have used it for recruiting. People doing searches for code in difficult areas might be worth talking to. Google has tried that. At one time, if you searched for "proof of correctness", you got a Google recruiting ad. I was once contacted because I posted something in comp.lang.c++. (Unfortunately the person who contacted me was so clueless I told him to put me on their do-not-call list.)
Even if a store accepted NFC-based Android Pay, I'd probably still opt to pull out my plastic card for the cashback and consumer protection. Google/Apple Pay need to find a way to weave benefits into their systems if they want to win the market.
Of course that means your bank supports Android Pay, but that's really the standard hit-or-miss technology adoption that banks are slow at anyways.
I have the old American Express Blue Cash card which has some crazy 5% cashback on gas and groceries once you hit a minimum spend during the year. That thing paid out like a slot machine when gas prices were hovering around $3.50 a gallon and I was doing a 100 mile commute daily.
The cashback, rewards and consumer protection are done through the card issuer and backing bank. You're still paying through the same account, but with a different interface (your phone instead of plastic).
Or maybe they'll cancel Gmail so users will transfer to (ew) Google Inbox. I sure hope not.
A long-term IMAP storage is legally needed for the spooks to read your email in real-time. With POP they don't have the legal excuses, so they cannot read it. Only what's left over there.
There is an API for that: https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides/push#stopping...
All these services that Google has or will eventually shut down were at one time at the "go/no go" stage. When Google was still a start-up that "go/no go" decision might be based off of resources or a particular group of programmers passion. Now a mature company, this decision is generally made based on calculations as to how a particular project will fit into the overall portfolio and impact the bottom line.
Some projects, no matter how much a passionate group of programmers might lobby, may never get off the ground because there isn't a sufficient argument in terms of the larger picture. But, and here I finally get to my point, some projects are surely proposed purely to protect the bottom line from competitors or to hedge against changes in the marketplace; i.e. Google+ was purely to protect against the trend of Facebook becoming a growing percentage of a user's on-line experience and walling off content to Google's search engine.
Another example, still unfolding, is that of their Nest acquisition. And this is where the real damage gets done. Google sees the growth of the IOT market, and so acquires Nest so as to get a foothold into that market.
Now both Google+ and Nest are dying horrible, slow, shot in the stomach movie deaths, and everyone is forced to watch. What could have been accomplished by the engineers working on these projects if their primary goal was to serve a remote master, the bottom line of Alphabet? Perhaps, if these two products where not born out of a proxy war to buttress the revenue of Google Search, perhaps we all could have seen great things born out of their endeavors.
Instead, having served their purpose, the fiscal responsibility due to the shareholders of Alphabet having been fulfilled, the Alphabet PR machine gently asks that we look away, and look to their next amazing product.
I really hate gushing about products and services on public forums, but Simple deserves it.
1. Experiment, Excite, Evaporate ?
2. Google SDLC: PoC, Beta, Retire ?
"Google it" starts to sounds like "Kill it"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
My debit/credit card pairing hasn't been cancelled or changed in the 10 years I have had it unless I have specifically engineered that change.
The reality is that you just shouldn't trust google for anything that appears long term, and consider them as a casual partner, not a long term relationship.
I am perfectly fine with people saying that Google, a multi-billion dollar corporation, cancels things less often than a company with a completely uncertain future and no profit.
I am also fine with saying that comparison is not fair to the startups or to business that try to deliver a faithful product to their customers.
Perhaps they need to unbundle.
Google Wave works great today on self-hosted platforms.
But what would you take from Google Wallet? The physical debit card? The payment service? Unless you're opening a bank, I'm not sure how useful any of that would be.
The nice thing with most Google apps is that you can get your data out easily with Takeout: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2015/08/export-all-your-goo...
[1] Google Notebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Notebook
If not, then do you have the same fear of any new product from any company? That risk is there too...
But I really wanted to try it out anyways -- with number portability there's just not that much risk.
I think there's a phone interface feature associated with Google Hangouts. ("Google Hangups?") But it probably requires that everyone you talk to have a Google account. All these little closed-world communications systems are a pain.
The dedicated Google Voice app has withered, but Google seems to be integrating the service into their other projects.
Er, it's a phone interface. It makes phone calls. Everyone you talk to is only required to have a phone number.
"Hangouts remains the future of Google Voice, so we’re going to keep bringing the most-loved Google Voice features into the core Hangouts experience,"
Now we have Google, that's almost as big but not as contentious, and they're canceling things left and right, and that's causing problems too. So now I'm not sure what my position is on the topic.
EDIT: Taking a stab at answering my own question - it looks like you can only set up ACH drafts from the list of supported banks, but as far as I can tell you can use any major credit card to fund purchases.
EDIT AGAIN: As pointed out below, this only works for me because I added these cards in to the old app and they were grandfathered in.
EDIT: Apple uses a tokenized system, each transaction nets them a fee. Google has a hack for the payment network, it costs them for each transaction.
NFC tokenized payments (e.g., Apple Pay and Android Pay) use an alternative credit card number issued by the bank. Payments do not go through Google or Apple, and only the bank knows that this alternate number is associated with your credit card account.
Android Pay works for me the way that you described Google Wallet working. I add a card number (seems like almost any card works, I have a MasterCard Amex and Visa Credit and Debit that all work) After I tap to pay Google charges my card for the amount.
EDIT: I just looked back at one of the recent tap-to-pay purchases I made with Android Pay, the charge on my card says 'GOOGNFC*[merchant-name]'. I believe that means that Android Pay charges are going through Google.
You can't add any new cards to Android Pay unless the bank supports tokenization, and payments are processed directly by them, no longer going through Google.
So that list is basically the set of issuing banks which have done whatever steps are necessary to integrate with Android Pay.
[0] Typical flow looks something like this:
The merchant signs up with a payment processor who issues them a POS; this is the machine you swipe your card through. That swipe goes to the payment processor's network, which looks at the first 6 card digits, otherwise known as the Issuer Identification Number [1], and routes to the appropriate card network. For instance, any card starting with "37xxxx" is going to route to AmEx. The card network then routes to the issuing bank, who actually approves (or not) the transaction.
So POS -> Payment Processor -> Card -> Issuer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_card_number#Issuer_identi...
Note the verbiage on the second section of the supported issuers: "Add a card from any of these participating banks and continue to get the same rewards, benefits, and security of your cards."
I have a feeling that unless the issuing bank is supported, that Google is basically routing the payment through themselves. (Your responses on the other thread seems to confirm this.) So basically, Google bills your card directly, and they somehow route the money to the merchant. (Not sure what would the the "normal" way to do that; a bit out of my depth. I could probably ask people if you really want to know.) This means that, for instance, if your card gives a bonus for restaurants, and you use Android Pay and the issuer is not supported, that you likely will not get that bonus. Because according to your card the merchant is actually Google and not the restaurant.
So basically, Google is acting as a middle man in the transaction. They (somehow) pay the merchant in lieu of your card, then bill your card directly. This would not happen with a supported issuer; the payment would proceed as it normally would without Google and you get all your sweet, sweet reward points.
Good point about the merchant specific CC points - it seems obvious that Google is losing out in this strategy because they're probably footing part of the merchant fees instead of passing them on to me (or the seller.) I couldn't think of a way that that would matter to me as a user, though.
After grace period, Android Pay no longer supports adding cards without support from bank and tokenization. For example, I had deleted my Chase card and get an error about bank not being supported if I try to add it.
The issue is that by using virtual Master Cards they have to pay part of the interchange fee to Citi (or was it Bancorp?). Not only that, but if you were backing it by a credit card, then they ate the 2% fee that they get charged in the backend when hitting your real credit card.
Plus the fact that they were essentially issuing you and everyone else short term credit when you made a purchase and that every transaction was Card Not Present no matter what (even if you swiped the "real" google wallet card, which was fun to do) ... yeah.
It was never going to stick around unless you got charged for usage, at which point it's not so attractive.
The pressure in the industry is to move to the secure-element/token based system anyway, i.e. Samsung/Android/Apple pay.
If you want to do funky stuff in the backend to abstract your purchases into one place then Simple or something like that is for you.
What I'm worried about is what's going to happen with the send-money feature of Google Wallet, which was attractive for short-term keeping track of who owes who what without Paypal fees.
I'm hoping they bring that back and somehow link it into Android Pay, even if there's some kind of fee coming or going for when you actually "collect". (Keeping it otherwise liquid and fee-free when you're just moving numbers around between accounts inside the system).
crosses fingers
The confusion is that Google Wallet app did both the Wallet transfers and NFC payments. Before Android Pay, the NFC payments used virtual credit cards.
The send money functionality for Google Wallet still exists. It is now the only purpose of the separate Wallet app.
Money will be taken directly from the sender's debit card or checking account, and the recipient can deposit it in their checking account. The only features going away are the physical Wallet card and the ability to add to your Wallet balance.
According to /u/GraemeStanding, who appears to work on Android Pay (which is basically the old NFC payment portion of Google Wallet, split off and rebranded): https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4crogp/just_got_an...
I mean if you can do ACH (i.e debit cards) with both parties and avoid fees then that's convenient in that you don't have to exchange checking account numbers or something outrageous (just email addresses), but that still could take an indeterminate amount of time to settle. Next day? A week?
But with the wallet balance you could hold transfers I got from other people or put money in ahead of time from my bank and then when I need it, the other party knows they got it on their phone.
Who's gonna "keep an eye out" for "new features and a fresh design" after they discontinue the thing? What about keeping the existing service working for this "coming months"?
Whatever it was they canned.
RIP YetAnotherGoogleService
Simple does not seem to have that condition.
Dear users,
[ ]MAJOR [ ] MINOR
Google service which you
[ ] DEPENDED ON TO DO YOUR JOB [ ] BUILT MAJOR PARTS OF YOUR WORKFLOW ON [ ] LIKED A LOT [ ] HAD BEEN MEANING TO TRY OUT, DAMMIT [ ] HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF
will be discontinued
[ ] LITERALLY TOMORROW [ ] IN SIX MONTHS, AND YOU CAN EXPORT YOUR DATA BUT IT'S IN SOME COMBINATION JSON+XML FORMAT WHICH THE DEVELOPERS THINK IS TOTALLY HIP BUT PROBABLY YOU SHOULD JUST WAIT FOR SOMEONE HIPPER THAN YOU TO WRITE A LIBRARY TO PARSE IT [ ] AND AUTO-MIGRATED TO A SERVICE YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO USE
Thanks for your support. Please try out
NEW PRODUCT THAT WE ARE INTRODUCING TOMORROW AND SUNSETTING
[ ] WHO KNOWS HAHAHAHA
See you at http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ !
Love, Google.