“We are committed to NFC at Google.” That is what the company’s Vice President of Payments Osama Bedier, told an audience of bankers and mobile operators in London on a summer afternoon.
Less than a month following the announcement of Google Wallet and Google Offers, Bedier was nothing short of a rock star at the NFC Payments Europe event organized by NFC Insight. It was, in a strange way, both encouraging and pitiful to see the banks and mobile operators laud the Google announcement.
He was praised for his insistence on openness, interoperability and the ‘help us, help you’ nature of the offering. To the side, however, the same proponents expressed concern.
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Google has to due this or something like this to get the complete customer transactions. They want the whole processes "search to checkout to buy". The bank's are the losers here. Banks today have access to all their customer's data. With Google it will be the same as Paypal and I-tunes. A proxy account linked to the customer's real account. Long term this is going to go down the same path as both Paypal and I-tunes "a payment method for an specific business".
You have to ask yourself why Paypal has not had much success outside of Ebay? They have tried a lot to alter the non-Ebay payment process and it still has not happened. It because banks are not big fans of Paypal outside of protecting them with Ebay fraud.
I-tunes is all about making it easy to buy Apple stuff. Which banks don't care about because it is a single merchant.
Once the banks understand this it will be hard for them to partner with Google.
They will look just like another Paypal.
O and buy the way where did Osama Bedier come from..... Paypal..
The Google Wallet seems to be a logical step for the company to come into the physical world from the virtual world. At the same time I feel the solution they are proposing is very restrictive - why is the user restricted to Sprint devices, why just a Citi MasterCard and nothing else, and why only 1-2 devices that are not exactly the best devices on the market right now even for Android. I had higher hopes for Isis, since they offer more flexibility in carrier choice and devices, but it looks like they are not going to be ready anytime soon, and may never bring the "offers" experience that Google can bring - but looking at what is happening at Groupon and Facebook Deals - I am not sure if that is an area worth getting into these days. I do like some of the alternate programs such as moneto.me or the bank led programs by BoA, USBank, etc where there is direct issuance of a credential by the bank - each of which allow mobile payments on a variety of devices.
As a consumer - here are the questions I have of Google Wallet: