

Google Wallet moves to the cloud, opens up to all credit and debit cards - modeless
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/google-wallet-moves-to-the-cloud-opens-up-to-all-credit-and-deb/

======
mpclark
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...

~~~
ben1040
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?

------
benologist
Summary spam stuffed and tagged with SEO spam.

[http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2012/08/use-any-credit-
or...](http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2012/08/use-any-credit-or-debit-
card-with.html)

~~~
jrockway
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
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.

~~~
benologist
I think HN could easily solve it - they don't need anything from these sites,
a moderator could just replace their URLs and it doesn't matter if the content
farms don't like it - it's not like digg and reddit where their widgets made
it some sort of (probably massively lopsided) traffic and link exchange.

~~~
malandrew
I am so in favor of this approach. If HN wants to maintain high quality, it
needs to make a commitment to primary sources and ban secondary sources.

Articles that are replies to articles should be fine, but articles that
summarize other others really have to go unless they (1) do a remarkable job
of shining like on the subject or (2) provide a novel viewpoint/opinion
amongst the summary.

We should call seo spam summaries "spummary" or "spammary".

------
jdelsman
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.

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

~~~
tonfa
Could you side-load it?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I'm planning to try. My wife's got a Galaxy Nexus on T-Mobile, so I'll install
it there and see what I can do with it. Now to get it away from her for 30
minutes...

------
nuclear_eclipse
Still being blocked for users on Verizon....

~~~
andrewpi
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.

~~~
ben1040
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.

------
batgaijin
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.

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

~~~
maratd
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.

~~~
Cherian_Abraham
It's not that it is missing the Secure Element. Simply that Google does not
have access to the Master Keys for that Secure Element.

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

~~~
kamechan
Works at Whole Foods and Peet's coffee.

