Google Wallet Archives - Serious Startups

Google Officially Updates Google Wallet To 4 No Wait 3 No Wait 2 Credit Card Brands

Earlier this week nibletz.com Co-Founder and Google extreme loyalist Cameron Wright, was bragging to me while we were on the road in Ohio, that Google Wallet was now a game-changer. He was finally excited that you could add any major credit card to Google’s NFC enabled “Google Wallet” product.

Today that is still the case however Google has come under fire by TechCrunch and SAI after it was learned, that they actually had no definitive agreement with American Express, and one other credit card carrier. They haven’t named the other credit card carrier but our sources tell us it starts with a D and ends in an R and has iscove in the middle.

While both American Express cards and the other cards are still available for use with Google Wallet either company can pull the plug at anytime. This TechCrunch story points specifically to American Express.

American Express is concerned with the transparency that Mastercard’s Pay Pass program provides to the customers. Currently Mastercard Pay Pass terminals are still the only terminals that are able to accept Google Wallet, regardless of which credit card provider your transaction goes to.

This isn’t meant to alarm anyone as Google Wallet is essentially a safe mobile commerce payment solution. American Express (and we will assume the other company as well), doesn’t like the amount of data that Mastercard Pay Pass provides. Mastercard’s Pay Pass terminals only provide location and transaction amount back to credit card carriers outside of Mastercard.

While American Express has long been a partner of Google’s “Google Checkout” payment system, they never signed an agreement with Google specifically for Google Wallet. Earlier this year Google merged all of their payment products together under one umbrella, perhaps thinking that this merge would allow them to arbitrarily just use all four brands.

American Express’ Social Media VP Scott Minor told Chris Velazco at TechCrunch:

“We want to make sure Google’s mobile wallet product meets the standards we set for our Cardmembers in terms of transparency and clarity about transaction detail,” Minor said. “Right now, American Express does not have an agreement with Google for our cards to be used in the Google mobile wallet.”

It took a good part of the day yesterday, but Google finally replied to Velazco’s request for a statement and said:

For many years, we’ve accepted American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover for online and mobile transactions. The latest version of Google Wallet extends these same benefits to people who choose to use the Google Wallet app to make purchases in-store. We are in active discussions with American Express and look forward to working together as partners as the world embraces digital payments.”

Google has been struggling with Google Wallet since they first launched the product via the Samsung Galaxy S and then the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. When it was released Google Wallet supported their own in-house prepaid credit card program along with Citibank MasterCards. While American Express and the “other” credit card carrier hash out the details of an agreement with Google, all four brands are still able to connect to Google Wallet and use via NFC.

We are well into the summer of 2012 and still waiting for the rollout of ISIS, the mobile payment service developed in concert with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile .At South By Southwest earlier this year ISIS indicated that they would have markets up and testing during the Summer of 2012.

Linkage:

SAI Story

TC Story

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Google Acquires TxVia To Help Bring Google Wallet Into The Prepaid Space.

New York based TxVia has been working in the prepaid space since 2008. They reportedly handle over 100 million accounts and have partnerships with some of the biggest brands in the world.

Google announced on their Google Commerce Blog last week that they’ve acquired TxVia. Google didn’t disclose any of the financials behind the deal.

Google’s VP of Wallet & Payments Osama Bedier said on the Google Commerce Blog:

“They’ve partnered with the industry’s best known brands, and their leadership team has played an instrumental role in defining the fast-growing prepaid card segment of emerging payments.”

Google is working relentlessly as of late, on refining the Google Wallet platform and trying to build scale as quick as they can before ISIS rolls out.

While Google has teamed up with the nation’s third largest carrier, Sprint, to roll out Google Wallet the other three carriers have teamed up to form ISIS another virtual wallet and checkout program. ISIS has been successful in partnering with not only three of the for major carriers but some of the largest payment partners as well. For instance, Google’s current POS partner for Google Wallet transactions is Mastercard’s Pay Pass. ISIS on the other hand, has secured Verifone for their POS transactions.

According to Google TxVia has a payment network that is fast and reliable.

It hasn’t been revealed what role TxVia will play in all of this. Gift cards and prepaid cards have always been in the plans for Google Wallet. It appears, that with this transaction, Google Wallet will be closer to rolling out more “funding” options for Google Wallet customers.

Source: Google Commerce Blog

#CES2012 Intel, Ultrabooks, Isis, and Gemalto: is this the year of NFC?

Our good friend Sylvie Barak was quoted on the Gemalto blog

Intel demos NFC on an ultrabook: tap your credit card on your laptop touchpad to pay. #AWESOME #CES #eet_CES

Personally I don’t see making payments with a laptop being an option that many people would adopt. Bringing the ability for retailers, small businesses, or the average consumer to accept payments via built-in NFC hardware is an entirely different matter. We have already begun to witness the downfall of the traditional payment options and watched as first PayPal then Square knocked down the payment barriers.

With Google Wallet and Isis using NFC payments and PayPal by phone at Home Depot stores (without NFC) and NFC payments in Sweden it is clear we have almost arrived at a new paradigm in the ability to accept payments. When your smartphone can act as a terminal for both positive and negative cash flow, without any additional hardware, the benefits will market themselves.

Last year I heard over and over “2011 is the year of NFC (in the U.S.)” beginning at CES. I was not clear on why people were making that statement at the time. If I remember correctly, there were no high-profile devices announced in Las Vegas last year. The Nexus S had been announced in November the previous year, sure, but that was it. There was extremely limited NFC functionality for the end-user at the time.