But then I still had to tell the dumb credit console whether I was paying debit or credit. And then I had to wait for my receipt to print out, all 16km of it. Which made my attempt at being a mysterious stranger with mysterious magical technology quickly disappearing into the night fail miserably since it would’ve been mad awkward to stare directly into each other’s eyes for 45 seconds without saying a word.
Google Wallet is clearly a close-up glimpse at what the seamless, slippery future of money looks like-MasterCard is an appropriate enough vector for a technological Mark of the Beast, I suppose-but it’s still very much in 2011. Friction abounds.
If you’re unfamiliar with Google Wallet, read this, or here’s the rough rundown. (Really rough, since Google Wallet’s a lot of little things, banded together.) Google Wallet is an app that lets you pay for things using your phone, either by tying your credit card(s) or loading up gift/pre-paid cards. That’s the software side. Using an NFC chip embedded in a phone, you tap a pay terminal. No swiping your card. That’s the hardware side. On the online side, it’ll seamlessly combine digital coupons that you collect-either from Google Offers or merchants themselves-and loyalty cards.
The perfect theoretical transaction looks like this: You snag a Google Offer for $1 off a Frappucino Starbucks. (Or if you don’t have an offer on tap, Google Shopper will show you a bunch nearby.) You go to the nearest Starbucks-pinpointed by Google, of course-and order your terribly sweet concoction. When you go to pay for your drink, you open the Wallet app and tap the payment console with your phone. Instantly, your Google Offer coupon is applied, you’ve paid for your drink, and you’ve racked up points on your Starbucks loyalty card. And the receipt’s on your phone.
What Google Wallet looks like today, though, is vastly different. The Wallet app will hit Nexus S 4G phones on Sprint today-and only those phones for now. (Google promised an NFC sticker to enable non-NFC-packing phones to use Wallet, but isn’t saying anything else about it now.) The system exclusively uses Mastercard’s PayPass terminals, deeply limiting the number of places you can use Wallet, though Google announced today it’s licensing NFC specifications from Visa, Discover and AmEx. (Basically, the only place it’s useful to me is in NYC cabs, since I don’t shop at American Eagle or Macy’s or practically any of the other big box stores partnering with Google.) And, to top it all off, it’s only Citi Mastercards that currently get the full benefits of Google Wallet-for now, to pay with anything but gift cards, you’ve basically gotta charge a pre-paid Google Card with money from your bank account through Google Checkout. All things that highly constrain just how convenient Google Wallet actually is today.
So my experience using Google Wallet is very much what I expect it to be for most people out of the gate: a novelty, mostly, but terribly convenient in at least a couple of places. At least after I loaded it up with money, which seems weird, like giving myself an allowance. But anyways, you know where it was awesome? In a cab. Trying to dig your wallet out of your arse pocket while you’re sitting down, ripping the right credit out of your wallet, trying to figure out where to swipe it, fumbling around with the card to get it facing the right direction, going through the right number of menus, swiping at the correct speed, finally, and then paying the damn cabbie is like, um, annoying. Google Wallet fixes it. And it will fix a lot of things, perhaps sooner than you’d expect. Because money, infrastructure like this, is a scale game. Google’s got scale. Its partners, like Mastercard and Visa and Citi, have scale. [Google, Google Wallet]
Stay tuned for news on Australia. Could be a while coming yet.
Taufiq
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 8:24 AMAustralia plz?
Ogre
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 8:47 AMI don’t think the “giving yourself an allowance” idea is weird at all. This is what I do with my transaction account with my bank (via internet banking) all the time. Because the interest on my savings accounts are compounded daily (but paid monthly), it means that I’m getting as much interest as possible, and only lose that when I actually need to buy something.
Yes, it means I have to micromanage my money all the time, but I don’t consider that a bad thing.
One thing that concerns me about Google Wallet is the NFC sticker mentioned. How would that work? I thought the whole point of using your phone, was that the phone was powerful enough to encrypt the packets sent over NFC, and of course, you can turn an app off, but you can’t turn off a sticker or your passive RFID credit card (which of course is bad, because someone could easily write an app for their phone that reads NFC readable devices like these, and stores the information, which would be the equivalent of someone else knowing your credit card number). If these stickers work, does that mean that using an internal NFC chip is actually unencrypted?
Isaac
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 12:02 PMI assume the range on the RFID chip would be incredibly small, so small infect you have to physically touchy the device to a reader. So unless someone is going to go around rubbing their phone against other peoples to try and steal their cards it’s kind of a non issue, and in that situation anyone who’s details are stolen probably deserves it for letting it happen.
Andrew
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 1:32 PMNot only are the chips encrypted, thay have a self destruct mechanism if tampered with (not kidding, but it’s not as exciting as the IMF team). That NFC sticker sounds like pure fantasy after going through the details of how these transactions take place. I’m thoroughly convinced that the process is more secure than credit cards.
Dan
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 11:44 AMWould/Could this work like the Paywave thing we have in Aus?
TerrorBite
Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 4:47 PMIt appears to use the MasterCard PayPass system, since the PayPass logo appears on the virtual Google card. PayWave is just Visa’s version of PayPass and they both use the same reader.
Steve
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 11:49 PMMy main issue is uptake. If only half the places I frequent use it, it kinda defeats the purpose. If Google manages to get more partners, then it sounds amazing. All your credit/discount/membership cards on one device? Hell yeah.
Ferosh
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8:28 PMWhat’s going on with the odd locations this is enabled in Australia? Obviously already testing here, right?
http://www.google.com/wallet/where-it-works.html