Google Wallet moves to the cloud, opens up to all credit and debit cards

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/google-wallet-moves-to-the-cloud-opens-up-to-all-credit-and-deb/

by modeless • 14 years ago

70 29 14 years ago

_ea1k2• 14 years ago

AFAIK, this still does not support phones which lack a secure element (T-Mobile US, SGSII... probably others as well). Hopefully that will come in another iteration or two.

ajross• 14 years ago

Those phones don't have NFC anyway, which is a more realistic impediment. It's NFC-based wallet that is the real innovation here. Online payments by themselves are hardly new territory.

nuclear_eclipse3• 14 years ago

However, my Nexus S (on T-Mobile) does have the NFC chip and the Play Store is still reporting it as being incompatible.

maratd2• 14 years ago

My AT&T HTC One X has perfectly working NFC, which I use. It does not have a secure element. Google Wallet does not work, even after being side-loaded. So no, for me at least, the real impediment is the secure element.

_ea1k2• 14 years ago

The SGSII on T-Mobile that I mentioned (T989) does have an NFC chip.

mpclark• 14 years ago

There's a bit of sleight of hand going on here, in that it seems to be a Mastercard prepaid card in the phone which just charges your transactions to other cards you have on file with Google. So you don't pay the retailer with Amex, you pay with MasterCard and the charge eventually lands on your Amex. This makes it a bit like PayPal, but we already know that PayPal prefers to draw money from your bank account rather than your credit card because it is cheaper. It will be interesting to understand how the fees are structured around all of this because it seems to me there could be 2x friction in play...

andrewpi2• 14 years ago

It's possible that Google is getting a percentage of the transaction fee that is paid by the merchant when the 'virtual' Google Wallet Mastercard is used, and then applying that money to the transaction fee that they have to pay to charge your American Express, etc.

ben10402• 14 years ago

I wonder how this plays in with chargebacks & consumer protection from cards.

If Google's partner bank is a proxy between the merchant and, say, your Amex, what happens if you need to invoke a chargeback? Does Google's partner get involved and push back against Amex?

nuclear_eclipse3• 14 years ago

Still being blocked for users on Verizon....

andrewpi2• 14 years ago

My friend with a Verizon Galaxy Nexus who had previously sideloaded the Wallet.apk says that his Wallet application updated from the Play Store today with the new features.

ben10402• 14 years ago

There seems to be a loophole where if you have already sideloaded a version originally downloaded form the Play Store (i.e. if you extracted the apk from a rooted HSPA+ Nexus device), then you can get updates.

If you've not installed it, then the store won't let you have it.

Pwntastic• 14 years ago

I had to manually go to the google wallet page on the play store and click install before it actually updated on my phone.

I already had it installed on my phone but it wasn't detecting an update in the play store until I force re-installed it

benologist2• 14 years ago

Summary spam stuffed and tagged with SEO spam.

http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2012/08/use-any-credit-or...

jrockway• 14 years ago

Ironically, I posted that link immediately after we posted the announcement and it didn't get any traction. I think people like the editorialized versions better, or something.

modeless• 14 years ago

I think HN's policy of requiring the article title be used as the submission title really hurts here. Blogspam reposts generally have snappier titles than primary sources like company blogs (even to the point of outright lying in many cases).

This is a hard problem that no social news site has solved. One idea would be to allow users to connect stories to each other through some sort of collective voting mechanism, so blogspam submissions could be linked to each other and the primary source even after they hit the homepage.

Kadrith• 14 years ago

Any chance of being able to link Dwolla to this in the future?

batgaijin• 14 years ago

Does this have anything to do with competing with Stripe as a payment system? The article seems to focus on the mobile aspect, so I'd assume not, but engadget focuses on consumer improvements.

ars• 14 years ago

They need to get WalMart, Target and some large grocery stores to gain critical mass here.

kamechan• 14 years ago

Works at Whole Foods and Peet's coffee.

eblume• 14 years ago

When can I use my HTC One X as a replacement for my credit card? Call me when that happens, until then I see this as just another PayPal.

Unless we're already there, but some short internet searches found nothing but misleading blog post titles.

StavrosK• 14 years ago

The One X has an NFC sensor, so it should work with Wallet. Doesn't it?

maratd2• 14 years ago

The international version does, after lots of hacking and side-loading. The AT&T HTC One X does not. It is missing the secure element. As soon as Google decides to take this seriously and make their software compatible with devices whose names do not start with Nexus, then yeah, I'll be interested in this too.

And it really is up to them. It shouldn't be any more difficult than hitting install in the Google Play store. If I choose to buy an "insecure" phone, that's up to me. Warn me, fine ... but don't make the software incompatible. That's lame.

jdelsman• 14 years ago

For those of you who wonder why Starbucks and others continue to support their own card apps instead of PayPass/Google Wallet: credit card fees. Starbucks loads up $25 at a time, with a single $0.30 fee (or whatever they are charged), rather than having to pay $0.30 per small $3 (iced coffee, for example) transaction.

Google Wallet moves to the cloud, opens up to all credit and debit cards

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