Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and working with Visa, AmEx and Discover | Hacker News Reader

Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and working with Visa, AmEx and Discover

googleblog.blogspot.com

113 pointsfanfantm49 comments

This could, and should be the future. Will it be? Probably not for a while, mostly because Visa and AMEX will launch their own competitive products. Stores will be forced to make a choice as to which system they support. Google will scream for everyone to adopt their "open" system while everyone else will complain about Google wanting to be a monopoly in this new field. The feds will intervene and we'll see years of lawsuits. And, eventually, we'll end up with the ideal system, where everyone will support a standard-based open wallet system and every store will have something that supports that.. in 10-20 years.

I think it is the future and it will probably not take 10-20 years to have it implemented but rather more like 2-5 years. The race to become the platform is more important than the legal issues surrounding it. Whoever wins in this race will hold so many chips that they will gladly pay any legal speeding ticket. The merchants will get on board quickly as it will increase sales. I don't think Visa and Amex will compete as they will benefit from the usage of their cards through the E-Wallet (remember they are still in the credit business loaning out liquid and will not become obsolete). If anything, the competition will be played out between the smartphone operating systems. Apple will be next to launch. Lets hope someone is smart enough to create an easy system at the store to support all smartphone devices. I smell a new business venture? Anyone?

The problem here is not implementation and smartphone support, but adoption by merchants. There're still shops that do not accept regular credit cards out there, and this is a new type of technology that they must somehow accomodate. So, yeah, 2-5 years to iron out the kinks, but about 10 to make it a real mainstream thing. And god help us if there will be competing standards.

Speaking of competing standards. I have this Visa "blink" card from Chase. The supermarket where I shop, has terminals that accept "blink". Guess how often can I use my card there? The thing works maybe once in ten times I actually am trying to pass my card over the sensor. It's just easier to swipe it in the first place.

The convenience of mobile payments will make visiting cash-only countries like Austria and Netherlands (credit cards work, but only in some places so you always have to carry cash) even more awkward. Suddenly you have to think where to put that weird "paper money", or "plastic money" when you're used to only carrying your phone.

I wonder how people used to M-Pesa cope when outside of Kenya and the other countries where it works.

What about just charging from phone to phone? Without a need for a terminal, would it make merchant adoption easier?

I have a visa contactless credit card (Paywave), and it works well. It's a tap, not a wave. Saves me time.

American Express is largely a transaction company; they make a tidy income on their lending activities, but their largest source of revenue is the "discount revenue", the fees they charge merchants for accepting each transaction. Their card fees combined with other commissions are also, in aggregate, larger than their net lending income.

http://about.americanexpress.com/ar/2010/financial_results.a...

Click on "Consolidated Financial Statements".

So I'm sure they are happy to jump into a system like this that facilitates using their systems for the transaction, but they will mightily resist anything that tries to replace them directly.

The article says that they're in talks with Visa. Also, Google does not take a cut when you use your Mastercard, it's just like a regular wallet, not paypal. So really Visa and AMEX shouldn't have to reject it.

Visa made a blog post confirming support:

http://blog.visa.com/2011/09/19/google-licenses-visa%E2%80%9...

Just because something is free of charge doesn't mean it should be readily adopted.

Are traditional wallets really a problem? What exactly is the problem that is being solved here?

Is traditional cash really a problem? What problems does cash solve that pucca shells do not?

For me, it sounds like a super convenient way to replace my stupid thick wallet with a rubber band around my ID and some paper money.

Is traditional cash really a problem? What problems does cash solve that pucca shells do not?

Seriously? The advantages are legion. It would take days to write them all out. I'll just put down a couple. You don't have multiple denominations of shells, so you have to carry around a wagon full of shells, instead of a few large bills.

From a macro perspective, cash has even larger advantages. You can't conduct monetary policy as easily with a commodity currency. One reason recessions were so bad in the past (in the 1800s) is that commodity currencies are pro-cyclical, partially because of nominal stickiness, partially because of speculative attacks, and for other reasons, too.

For me, what's the advantage of replacing my credit card with a phone? My wallet becomes 1mm less thick, unless I want to carry my credit card around as a backup in case my phone battery dies. In a few years, when this becomes standard, and phones are good for multiple days, I'll be able to shave 1mm off my wallet. That's nice, but hardly analogous to the difference between paper fiat money and a hard commodity currency.

You forgot the advantage of not having to take the credit card out of your wallet and swipe it. I think I broke a sweat yesterday doing that.

If you have just one or two cards, I doubt you'd ever see the benefit. However I'm dying for a replacement for my bevy of cards:

- my personal amex

- my business amex

- my debit cards (multiple banks)

- my store cards (multiple)

- all my other ID-like and reward cards (ex: Costco, Avis, etc.).

You can already replace the last two groups with a loyalty card aggregator app like CardStar and its ilk.

Good point. This is going back a couple of steps in some regards. Assuming every store in the country already had this, I still wouldn't bite. I've had so many instances where my phone (Nexus s) died in the middle of the day, it is not funny. Credit card + 2x20 dollar bills in my wallet work wonders.

That said, I'm a big fan of Visa's blink. Instant payment can be done through ways other than a smartphone.

NFC payments can still work when your phone is out of battery. The reader can still read it (just like your credit card has no power). Google Wallet, of course, wouldn't work.

I thought there was some intelligent circuitry in place to prevent some threat scenarios. Specifically, I'm thinking of "butt sniffing". At Google IO, I thought we were told that you can't use the NFC function when the screen is locked. Am I mistaken? (I might be ... because the Google folks keep talking about a sticker for phones that don't have NFC ... I don't get it ... an explanation would be appreciated).

For me, pocket room and security. I used to have to carry around a phone,keys, CD player, wallet, and camera.

Now the camera and ipod are integrated into the phone, and I'm just carrying my phone, keys, and wallet. I really appreciate the extra pocket space, and I'd love to fold the wallet into the phone and get some more.

The extra security of having a PIN on your wallet is just a bonus.

Not to mention, the possibility of wiping your phone remotely with a single action, instead of trying to remember which cards were in your wallet and calling each one separately.

this is an awesome point I didn't even consider. I use AndroidLost and am able to remote wipe my phone at anytime from a browser. Now that I think about it, I would much rather be able to use my phone for payments with this ability, than to carry a physical card and risk losing it or leaving it somewhere. Yes I make backups of my phone using custom recovery ( clockworkMod Recovery).

You know you have your credit card blocked with one phone call, right? And that those not relay on it being on and having internet connection.

why even bother thats the point. With a regular credit card, you'll have to request a new card and number, wait for it in the mail, and now change all your accounts that are associated with it. With my phone, remotely wipe my sd card / lock out my phone. Track it down, and restore. Much easier. I have missplaced my credit card before, and the loss of my phone is more noticeable and quicker in general than my credit card that I didn't realize was missing till the next time I went to use it.

I have three credit cards, and two gift cards in there. That's a minimum of three calls, the numbers for which I have to find and call and sit through what is probably an automated system.

Sure, it's a first world problem. But that's where I live, and those are the problems I'd like solved.

What if Google suspends your account? Won't you lose your wallet then? Google has suspended a lot of accounts lately without consultation or timely redress. That's scarier than losing my wallet.

And maybe Andriod@Home and the car unlock/start apps will get rid of keys as well?

Google not collecting information on every purchase you make?

Oh you meant for the users? I guess the short term gain is receipt maintenance. Long term you can get rid of the wallet itself. Long term we'll have biometric cloud authentication so you won't need the smartphone either.

There's probably some law enforcement angle as well; as physical cash transactions fade away, organized crime will be easier to monitor.

LOL, i have this image of my pot guy showing me a paypass terminal.

My take on the problem:

http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Paying-With-Your-Phone-...

Well you made me realise its not solving the wallet problem, as you will still need a card as many outlets won't support the transaction type. There are plenty of other reasons to carrying a wallet, security cards for example, loyalty cards.

So its definitly not solving the wallet issue.

I won't be buying into it as I leave my phone all over the place. Plus I travel abroad a lot and already deal with way more fraud that I'd like anyway. Total pain dealing with banks to get all the fraudulent transactions reversed after getting home :/ anything that automates the process for me also automates it for the bad guys, so I'll be a late adopter thats for sure.

Anybody knows why it only works on the Sprint Nexus S but not the one on TMobile?

Sprint and Google have been very friendly recently[1], so it could just be an exclusivity thing.

What I'm more curious about is why none of Sprint's other, more recent Android phones have NFC in them- I just picked up a Photon yesterday sans NFC, and I'm led to believe that the EVO 3D and the Epic 4G Touch don't have it either. (Which is particularly weird for the E4GT, because the other Galaxy S II variants in the US actually have NFC in them. Who knows.)

[1] See the tight Google Voice/Sprint integration, the existence of the Nexus S 4G, etc.

It's pricey and often complicated to incorporate NFC at this stage. The phones that have it so far are more like experimental/reference platforms than anything else. When NFC is available on combo chips it will be everywhere, and manufacturers are just starting to commit properly now - Samsung and Acer have indicated all their future smartphones will have NFC within the last few days, BlackBerry is going the same way, and dear old Nokia could be too. Basically, it is still early days...

Likewise HTC's Head of Product mentioned all HTC phones in the US as of next year will start having NFC.

Well Nokia has definitely committed to NFC early on. All their recent smartphones have NFC, and all future models will have it. There's the device list: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications...

Also their recent accessories support bluetooth pairing with NFC, with single tap.

Perhaps related to this bit of information from the GigaOM article (link: http://gigaom.com/2011/09/19/google-wallet-goes-live-with-nf...):

Isis, a rival NFC payment system led by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile is also preparing to launch early next year.

Does google get a copy of your purchase data?

I think so. According to http://www.google.com/wallet/privacy.html

Transaction information - When you use Google Wallet to conduct a transaction, information regarding the transaction may be stored in the Google Wallet Application. We may collect information about these transactions from the Google Wallet Application. We also collect transaction data from your use of the Google Wallet Service. For example, if you use the Google Wallet Application to make a purchase at a merchant or download a merchant coupon, we may obtain information regarding that transaction from the Wallet Application, from the merchant and/or a partner, as applicable. The information may include the date and time of the purchase, the store location, the amount of the purchase, and the offer associated with the transaction.

Information about your use of Google Wallet - We may collect information about your interaction with the Google Wallet Service and the Google Wallet Application. This may include, for example, data on number of offers saved, payment attempts, and provisioning activity. Using added services may require your opt-in consent for Google Wallet to offer the functionality. For example, you may be offered the opportunity to opt-in to a service whereby Wallet would present offers to you based on your transaction activity through Wallet.

"Our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets"

It sounds like they're aiming to be closer to a paypal (or a, ahem, google checkout...) than just an OS hook for other credit card/payment apps.

disclaimer: my knowledge is limited to the content in the linked blog post and yesterday's threads :)

At least in some cases considering you can use a Google Prepaid Card.

Nothing of value to add, just noticing that that taxi customer just paid with his Google wallet and left no tip. How is that even possible? And second, I think Google should have learned better after the Google+ soon-to-become-fiasco that using geeks and other people like us to market their products isn't that much of an appealing offer to "normal"-looking potential clients/customers.

It's entirely possible to pay a tip using a card. How would this be any different?

No mention of an International roadmap or trialing in any other country but the US, or on any other device or network for that matter. This has started to annoy me about Google product releases, as I am Australian. Are they releasing too early? Trying to generate hype and be called the first to do something? Why wont they work on things for another 6 months to get it right?

In the intro video, the guy did not tip the cab driver! He would have taken longer otherwise...

He could have tipped during the cut away.

> Our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets.

Most of the cards in my wallet are IDs and discount cards (driver's license, student ID, a couple of grocery stores, gas, bus, train, AAA...). Even if they add support for all payment cards known to man, that would only take two cards out of my wallet. It's a great idea, but it's definitely not "replacing" traditional wallets anytime soon.

hmmm..

Wouldn't it be better if there is mobile payment between phones? I would love to pay my friends by tapping with their phones.

I think you can do this with Paypal's app + Bump. Of course, I'm not sure if you'd want to pay people using Paypal. This is one direction we've been thinking of (www.tagstand.com).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com