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jsnk

Could this potentially hurt Paypal monopoly?

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As long as it's US-only (as with almost every cool thing Google does) it's not a threat at all.

... it's US-only, again?

It won't be long before I just proxy all of my traffic through Amazon s3 or something.

... but you'll probably still have trouble setting a US bank account, S3 proxy or not.

(I'm in the same little boat outside of the US territorial waters btw)

I doubt a proxy will get you in on this. Google isn't that stupid. Financial transactions are seriously monitored by almost every government. You'll probably have to link to a U.S. bank acct or something.

Given the country-specific regulatory red tape that comes with anything involving money, there's more of an excuse than normal to roll this out country-by-country.

Google Wallet is how old now, three+ years? They didn't even bother adding any other way to pay than credit cards. Someone needs to tell them that there are countries where people simply don't use credit cards. They exist, but at cost, and the culture just isn't there.

If they continue innovating in the payment space at this rate, they will maybe have a solution people here can actually use in 2020.

Talking about credit cards, what's the difference between a credit card and just a bank account?

At my bank you can get a credit card at an added cost, but it's not needed for anything in the Netherlands so I never looked into it.

Credit cards have nothing to do with bank accounts. Maybe you're thinking of debit cards?

Uh yes I guess. With a debit card (we just call them bank cards) you withdraw money from the bank account, but from what I've heard a credit card doesn't work entirely the same.

Credit cards are merely debt obligations, and therefore money printing machines. If I have a credit limit of $10k, there isn't actually a $10k account anywhere backing that limit. The bank pays the merchant, yes, but you can follow the trail of that money all the way up to the central bank which created it out of nothing for purpose of fulfilling debt obligations. The money is then destroyed when I pay the bank back at the end of the month.

To the consumer they appear basically the same (“they both have the VISA logo right?”), but in understanding the mechanics of what is happening, they could not be more different.

Tell us more how you can proxy through s3

Oh my bad, I meant EC2. I never used AWS since they require a credit card even for the free things.

Google has been promising non-US/UK only Google wallet since 2008, but never done it.

Which is also why "bitcoin not affected" will continue.

It is one of the reasons Checkout was introduced in the first place.

However, I doubt this will have an instant effect. I'm not sure about the current status, but at some point sellers I contacted couldn't add Google Checkout as payment option as it was US exclusive.

Checkout and Wallet are not the same thing.

Wallet grew from Checkout. The Checkout brand is dead, but the functionality is still there in Wallet.

Google Checkout was before Wallet, to which I was referring in my comment. They later rebranded to Wallet and indeed rebranded, as I've been able to use my account as it was during Checkout. I don't even own an Android phone, but I use Google's payment option to pay virtual goods from time to time. So, I don't see big difference.

Interesting that this was PayPal's original plan - to allow people to send money over email.

I agree - US-Only is problematic, but I assume they plan to expand it worldwide..

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