Plastic cards for Google’s digital wallet?
Nov. 10, 2012, 9:00 a.m.
EST
This week, the search
giant added the “ Google Wallet Card ” to the list of devices able to use its
Google Wallet mobile payment system. Asked why users would want a physical
card, when the whole point of a digital wallet would seem to be to dispense
with the need for a carrying around a deck of plastic, a spokesman replied that
the company is “always working on ways to make shopping a better experience for
consumers.” By Thursday, all references to the “Google Wallet Card” were pulled
from the site. The company would not comment on that.
It’s not the first time
Google introduced its own cards. Earlier this year, the company launched a
pilot Google “AdWords” business credit card for small businesses in the U.K.
and U.S. to help them pay for and track their online advertising accounts with
Google.
But does it make sense to
have a plastic card to go with a virtual wallet? Perhaps, analysts say. The
physical card could help Google get people to embrace mobile payments. “They
can’t change people’s habits overnight,” says e-commerce consultant Bryan Eisenberg
. Plus, not all merchants have compatible terminals Walt Mossberg says the
Nexus 4 is a good phone, with especially good prices for unlocked versions, but
Android buyers should consider other models with LTE, better speakers, more
memory expansion, and the ability to use all carriers.
Introduced in 2011, as a
kind of Swiss army knife that could replace photo identification as well as
bank and credit cards, Google Wallet has so far been a bit of a flop, says M.G.
Siegler, a general partner at venture capital group CrunchFund. And he thinks
the plastic card is unlikely to help, because, as he puts it, “you can’t get to
the future by living in the past.”
Google Wallet has already
had its share of stumbling blocks — and faces some tough new competition.
Verizon Wireless, one of the country’s major cell phone operators, stopped
supporting Google Wallet last year. Instead, Verizon is part of the rival Isis
mobile payment system it launched with AT&T and T-Mobile. PayPal has an
Android and an iPhone app. And Square Wallet, an Android/iOS mobile app
launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, just signed a deal to access some
7,000 Starbucks stores nationwide.
Google declined to comment
on how many users have signed up, but says it is supported at 25 national
retailers and works in 200,000 “points of purchase” terminals nationwide. But
Brian Wieser, a media analyst at Pivotal Research Group in Portland, Ore., says
the reception among consumers has been tepid at best: Google is “throwing ideas
against the wall to see what sticks.”
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