
Google Wallet: Send money via text message - howsilly
http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2015/12/send-money-to-anyone-in-your-contact-list.html
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dforrestwilson
Congratulations America we just caught up with Kenya circa 2007!

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notliketherest
This is so wrong. Google Wallet is riding on the credit card rails. In Kenya,
where the card networks are virtually non existent, the telecom companies
stepped in as the network. And last time I checked, in Kenya, you can only
send money to those on the same network as you.

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kordless
This is so wrong. The title was _send money with a text message_. Regardless
of the limitations of M-Pesa, over $25B in value was transferred with it last
year, which indicates to me that it's useful and functional, regardless of
what you are saying about credit card "rails".

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bduerst
>over $25B in value was transferred with it last year

...Which is attributed to being the first-to-market payment system for Kenya,
as the person before you was describing. U.S. and Kenya merchant markets are
still an apples to oranges comparison.

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newjersey
Sending and receiving "money" within the same network is fairly trivial from a
technological point of view but once you tell customers that it is "money"
that they can technically convert to and from cash, I imagine there are
significant bureaucratic hoops to jump through, at least in the US. I bet even
something as seemingly simple as Chase QuickPay is actually pretty complicated
to implement (step one probably being: be a bank)

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relkor
My concern would be getting a link that I am supposed to follow where I input
my debit card number. Can someone explain how I know that text message --
which can be sent by anyone to me -- has a valid link to money? I would be
extremely suspicous if I got a message saying "Hey its Peter, I can pay you
back for $THING, just follow <link> and enter your debit card number to
recieve $AMOUNT right now"

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finnn
I'd assume <link> is a google.com domain, which one could, in theory, trust.
The page, on the trusted domain, would also clearly state the same
information, "enter your debit card number to receive $AMOUNT from $PERSON
(and profile pic probably) for $THING

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Natsu
You're right, but the average person isn't very discriminating or very able to
keep track of who can and cannot be trusted, so I would expect problems to
occur.

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guelo
Sounds similar to Square's Cash, exploiting an ACH trick. Except setting up
Cash for sending is magnitudes easier then setting up Wallet.

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plexicle
You don't need an account of any kind if you are the receiver here. You just
put in a debit card and you get the money.

So it's easier for the receiver but still requires a Wallet account for the
sender.

All that's left is to do this exact same thing but in reverse. Let a GW user
send a secure REQUEST link that only requires card information to pay.

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BallinBige
How does GW know where to deposit the money based on a Debit Card?

Im assuming the Debit card can trace back to the routing / checking account
number associated with the checking account.

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plexicle
It uses a reverse ACH trick. It's like charging the debit card, but in
reverse. It's also why it's nearly instantaneous.

Square's Cash app does the same thing.

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underyx
And of course, 'anyone' covers around 5% of the world.

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dang
Ok, we took 'anyone' out of the title above.

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kuschku
Maybe this issue needs to be addressed in the whole startup culture.

A lot of startups don’t even consider the fact that there might be people
living outside the US, neither in products nor in PR material.

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contingencies
Seconded. Look at the comments here briefly: ACH? That's US-only. Debit card?
That's first and second-world only. No discussion of the political or
engineering implications of any of the options discussed. No discussion of
opening hours, transfer reliability, best and worst case transfer latency,
maximum value cap, legal framework for dispute resolution, etc. No discussion
of what is probably the biggest recent development in the sector: Europe's
IBAN (now live in many non-EU/SEPA locations). The picture is clear. (PS. If
anyone needs a global perspective on business and consumer finance, tap me on
the shoulder)

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kuschku
Indeed.

Not even Google manages to handle anything except for credit cards or PayPal –
horrible.

I was thinking about writing a small JS IBAN verification lib that also format
and shows the user the issuing institute and Country.

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contingencies
Cool. Pro-tip: Use the actually machine-parseable version I maintain at
[https://code.google.com/p/php-iban/](https://code.google.com/p/php-iban/) ...
the officially issued text and PDF versions differ and the text version often
has inconsistent formatting to boot.

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yc1010
No details of WHERE exactly in the world this works, I presume this a yet
another US centric service

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nissehulth
Yep, I guess so, looks like they are doing "reverse charge" to debit cards. I
don't think this works in any other country than the U.S.

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contingencies
Google Wallet killed independent settlement solutions on Android by demanding
that applications on the App Store (now Google Play) settle via them. I
implemented (one of?) the only major carrier settlement capable applications
prior to this ban for a preloaded flagship application for Samsung in 2010. We
billed AT&T and T-Mobile, both of which had almost the same API for client
billing running through the Israeli (now apparently rebranding to appear
American) company AMDOCS. (The rumours are true: by providing 'outsourced
billing' they can basically spy on most mobile networks' customers... read the
public portion of their client list sometime) Anyway, we were already doing
pay by text (a carrier-specific configuration) for many years all over the
world before that. There are providers who set up these integrations for you
and provide global multi-market pay-by-SMS services, but the problem is that
the average mobile carrier does not have a unified view of its customer:
particularly pre-pay and post-pay customers may be subject to very different
limitations on pay-by-text availability and maximum charges. Then there's
backend settlement, often time-staggered on a monthly basis and incorporating
exchange rate risk exposure, etc. It's a PITA to do manually for multi-market,
but a real solution (settlement method neutral and incorporating the real
qualities of a settlement chain, including risk, legal jurisdiction for issue
resolution, insurance, maximum and minimum settlement time, maximum and
minimum volume, supported asset types, etc.) has been indefinitely deferred by
the likes of Google who seem happy enough to cozy up to the existing financial
establishment instead of rocking the boat. Possibly we have some hope now with
Chinese device manufacturers and WePay that the Chinese government's huge push
for the RMB to become a global reserve currency and their rapidly growing
global network of banks may yet provide for some cross-border payment
innovation where the west's incumbents have so far failed.

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dorfsmay
> "No email? No problem! Now you can send money to anyone in your contact list
> using just a phone number."

Are there really people with phone numbers but no email? Given how easy one
can get an email for free, and the prevalence of VoIP (both in standard and
proprietary forms), I'd expect the other way around to be true.

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yellowbkpk
Yes. For example, literally millions of people in India have cellphones and
use them exclusively for SMS. These same people will likely not have reliable
access to a computer for full-fledged e-mail.

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thetmkay
But will the service work in India?

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aembleton
Sounds a bit like [https://www.pingit.com/#!/](https://www.pingit.com/#!/) or
[http://www.paym.co.uk/](http://www.paym.co.uk/)

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geomark
It's been quite a few years since I've lived in the US so maybe I'm out of
touch. But where I live you can send money instantly to anyone if you know
their bank account number. You can do it online via your bank's website, via a
mobile app, or at an ATM. Can't you do that in the US via the ACH system? I
recall ACH was slow, taking a couple of days, but I don't recall if you could
ACH money to other people or only between accounts you control.

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pavel_lishin
I wonder what happens if that text message is intercepted; can someone claim
the money before the rightful recipient?

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pbreit
I'm guessing they thought of that possibility.

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pavel_lishin
And I'd love to hear their thoughts about it.

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pbreit
Well, email, which is comparatively easy to intercept has worked for PayPal
and others for over a decade.

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yc1010
Actually it hasn't

The whole Paypal model is based on its reversal+ resolution process which
usually favors buyer, requires an army of support personnel and has resulted
in them being one of the most hated companies in world.

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pbreit
Well, PayPal has been pretty successful. The things you listed don't have
much/anything to do with intercepted email fraud.

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dceddia
Are there fees involved? They don't seem to say anything about it in the post.

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free2rhyme214
No. Just like it doesn't cost you anything to send money to friends & family
on PayPal or use Square Cash.

I'd love to get rid of PayPal so we'll see how this works.

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obulpathi
I wish they add support for sending money internationally. That would be a
killer feature for Google Wallet!

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Animats
Does this work for sending money to prepaid debit cards?

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yownie
great cuz I want google eating up yet more of my personal habits and info

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kmfrk
I'm sure the customer support is just ace.

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finnn
I've had excellent results with Google Wallet customer support. I've had to
contact them a few times over the years, and they're some of the best customer
support experiences I've had, not that that's saying much. Google's customer
support seems basically non-existent for services that don't involve money,
but as soon as money is involved it seems quite good

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fweespeech
[http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500251756/Security-
flaw-...](http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500251756/Security-flaw-exposes-
billions-of-mobile-phone-users-to-eavesdropping)

Ffs

