
Google Wallet and Softcard - mrry
http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2015/02/tap-tap-whos-there-google-wallet-and.html
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freehunter
I'm getting tired of "hey guys check out this really cool, half-baked, and for
absolutely no reason, single-platform technology". Yeah iMessage/Facetime and
Google Hangouts is really cool but we're still using SMS and voice calling
because half of my friends have Android and half have iPhones. Worse yet,
we're all using Facebook Messenger or Snapchat because at least there is some
consistency between vendors there, unlike with SMS. Handoff/Continuity is
great, but if I can't hand off calls from my iPhone to my Windows desktop or
apps to my Linux laptop, who cares? I'm never going to have a chance to use
that. Oh look at this cool site that uses Chrome's new features. What a shame
I use Firefox. And Google Wallet/Apple Pay is nifty, but I have to enter my
card info twice if I switch between phones, and if I'm using a Windows Phone,
I'm still using my plastic.

We forced Microsoft to stop locking out their competitors with proprietary
versions of things that should be standards, and we did that more than 15
years ago. What progress have we made since then?

~~~
JeremyBanks
> _And Google Wallet /Apple Pay is nifty, but I have to enter my card info
> twice if I switch between phones, and if I'm using a Windows Phone, I'm
> still using my plastic._

Are you personally using two or three phone platforms with such frequency that
this is relevant?

~~~
freehunter
I bought a Lumia 920 when it came out in October 2012. I used that as a daily
driver until around March of 2013, when I bought a Nexus 4. I wasn't terribly
satisfied with it when it came to the camera and GPS navigation, so when I
went on trips or to events I would switch the SIM back to the Lumia 920. I got
tired of this and bought an iPhone 5c in December 2013. My wife broke her
iPhone 4 in June of 2014, so I gave her my 5c and switched back to the Lumia
920 until my work gave me an iPhone 5s in October of 2014. Luckily I'm using a
carrier that doesn't care how often you want to switch your phone, doesn't
lock their phones, and doesn't make you talk to them to activate a new phone.
I think everyone should have that freedom.

So in the last ~2 years, I've used three phone platforms with some regularity.
I also have a Windows desktop and I use a RHEL-based laptop for work. I like
to use the best that I can get for the task I'm using it for, no matter what
platform or ecosystem. Because of that, I make it a habit to not put things in
my workflow that are not reasonably cross-platform, unless there is literally
no better option.

------
IshKebab
I guess the carriers are scared enough of Apple Pay that they're willing to
work with Google now.

~~~
MBCook
Or maybe they just realized that they were just putting good money after bad
(because it wasn't succeeding) and decided to cut their losses and avoid the
(small?) risk of alienating customers.

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higherpurpose
What I want to know is when will Google Wallet introduce Apple Pay-like
tokenization so merchants can't track your purchases?

Google is actually kind of doing the _opposite_ right now. It's tracking your
purchases through a virtual credit card number and then giving all that data
to merchants. Sure you can reset that number, but since it's not automatic
like Apple's tokens, that means it will be used about as much as resetting the
advertising IDs on Android phones - so almost never. It also doesn't help that
Google is pro-actively giving that data to merchants (and now to carriers,
too, I assume).

~~~
Shooti
They already do according to the Google Wallet FAQ:

"Google Wallet stores your credit and debit cards on secure servers and
encrypts your payment information with industry-standard SSL (secure socket
layer) technology. Your full credit and debit card information is never shown
in the app and won't be shared with the merchant. In addition, access to
Google Wallet is protected by password or PIN. We also recommend locking your
phone with a passcode for additional security."

"Your actual credit card number is not stored. Only the Google Wallet Virtual
Card is stored, and Android's native access policies prevent malicious
applications from obtaining the data. Even if the data is compromised, Wallet
uses dynamically rotating credentials that change with each transaction and
are usable for a single payment only. Finally, all transactions are monitored
in real-time with Google’s risk and fraud detection systems."

[https://www.google.com/wallet/faq.html#tab=faq-
security](https://www.google.com/wallet/faq.html#tab=faq-security)

Keep in mind "Tokenization" has existed in the NFC industry for years, the
only thing which changed last year is that the EMV standards body agreed and
released a standardized way to do it in March 2014. Apple Pay is a branded
solution over that.

So what it really boils down to is whether or not you take Google's word for
it that their independent solution is secure. If not, you owe it to yourself
to not be using a Google Android phone in the first place.

~~~
higherpurpose
So there are two issues I was talking about:

1) rotation of tokens/virtual card numbers

2) giving the transaction data to merchants

From what you copied here it _seems_ that Google is rotating the virtual
numbers - however, there's no way of knowing if Google isn't still _tracking_
all of those numbers through your account and linking them back together for
data mining. I think there's a _high_ probability Google is doing that. Google
only says it's rotating the numbers.

And that leads us to #2, which remains completely unanswered. Google says it
doesn't give the _credit card information_ to merchants (as in your _real_
credit card number). However it could still give the transaction data.

~~~
Oletros
Google is the payment processor, of course they track and store the
transactions.

------
quadrature
And yet it still doesn't work in Canada which adopted the technology ahead of
the US and has a much wider roll out.

~~~
ryanseys
Adopted what technology? Canada has had chip tech and tap-to-pay tech in their
various debit and credit cards for a while but I've never seen tap-to-pay work
with a phone here in Canada. On top of that, Google Wallet has not yet been
rolled out to work in Canada or internationally for that matter, even with
their physical Google Wallet cards. If you attempt to make a purchase with the
physical card, it will be declined and you'll receive a notification saying
that international (non-US) purchases are not supported. Apple Pay
additionally does not work in Canada. Given the first point made, there's no
reason for them to activate it soon anyway because our hardware won't work out
of the gate regardless.

~~~
mynameisvlad
What?

Google Wallet not working is completely on Google/the issuing bank. That is
entirely a software limitation. If you try using the NFC on the phone and it
tells you it's not available internationally, then there's clearly no hardware
incompatibility, it's just Google not supporting international transactions.

Apple Pay not rolling out is also, similarly, because Apple is not ready to
roll out in Canada, it's entirely software-based. I had my iPhone region set
to Canada (I guess I never switched when I moved down) and I couldn't access
the settings. Once I switched to US, bam, there it was. There have already
been people who confirmed[1] that Apple Pay works perfectly fine in Canada.

NFC transactions are standardized, there is no "hardware won't work" because
the entire point of the standard is that it _will_ work. The incompatibilities
are completely arbitrary, it's the respective companies not wanting to expand
to Canada yet and using software to disable or limit the transactions based on
transaction location.

[1]: [http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/how-to-use-apple-pay-in-
canada...](http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/how-to-use-apple-pay-in-canada/51833)

------
coleca
If Google Wallet was to continue to exist this was inevitable because Softcard
(formerly ISIS) had locked up the usage of the secure element inside all the
Android phones coming from all the US carriers except Sprint and its MVNOs.
And ISIS was having a very hard time getting retailers onboard with its
platform despite offering 7 figure incentives and covering their
implementation costs for integration with their point of sale systems.

~~~
wmf
Isn't there an EMV-NFC standard that eliminates the need for POS integration?
IIRC CurrentC was the one that isn't using the standard.

~~~
coleca
Yes, there is a standard for payments on the PIN pads. However, the real push
for ISIS/Softcard was that they could do more than payments. They wanted to be
able to push coupons through the PIN pads to the POS from their app. That was
how they were planning to monetize the platform. The fees they would get from
banks to hook into the system were minimal.

Even if the PIN pads could support coupons over NFC, most large scale POS
software could not. I had experience last year trying to integrate
ISIS/Softcard into a large retailer that was running IBM/Toshiba ACE POS
software and ISIS/Softcard support wasn't even IBM/Toshiba's radar. Many large
retailers run ACE (Kroger, Safeway, Costco, Macys, etc.).

~~~
wmf
Ah, my mistake. I was thinking of the credit card system as a "dumb pipe" for
money. Why would anyone want to build that?

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arthurcolle
Is this an acquisition?

~~~
mikeyouse
Google called it a partnership and Softcard said something along the lines of
"Google is acquiring Softcard's technology" which leaves me a bit confused but
I don't think it's an outright acquisition.

