Google Reveals Mobile Payment System: Google Wallet
At Google’s media event Thursday in New York City, the company unveiled Google Wallet, its mobile payment system, as well as more details about Google Offers. Mashable was at the event for the announcements. Here is a recap of what happened.Announcements Recap: Google Wallet & Offers
11:52 a.m. The event is about to get started. Press and partners are here and we’re all anticipating Google’snot so-secret NFC and contactless payment plans.
12:00 p.m. Google will be announcing Google Wallet and Google Offers, built on an open platform that is built to combine payments and offers at the point of sale. “Your phone will be your wallet.”
12:02 p.m. Consumer opinion on ecommerce is evolving, with 70% of users now comfortable with using the Internet to share and manage their financial information.
12:05 p.m. MasterCard is on stage discussing the evolution of NFC and mobile payments and how the smartphone revolution has helped push the idea into a reality, “transforming the shopping experience.”
12:07 p.m. Google is partnering with Citi, MasterCard, FirstData and Sprint to bring better and more evolved payments to the public. Google stresses this is the first step and that this vision will “take a while to come to fruition.”
12:11 p.m. Google Wallet is up first. Google Wallet will go into a field test today and will launch this summer. It uses NFC and is working with Citi and MasterCard and First Data. It turns your phone into a wallet.
12:12 p.m. The first iteration will serve payments, offers and gift cards with a single tap.
12:14 p.m. Google Offers, which will also launch this summer, will debut in San Francisco, Portland and New York. It’s more than a deal-of-the-day system, working as a place to house offers, loyalty rewards and Google Places merchant deals all in one place.
12:15 p.m. Osama Bedier, VP of Payments at Google (and formerly of PayPal) is on stage to demonstrate the Google Wallet and Google Offers product. Google Wallet requires users to associate Google Wallet with a Google account. After agreeing to terms and conditions and entering a PIN, users can then start the process of provisioning their cards to their account.
12:23 p.m. Google is now talking about the security behind mobile payment and provisioning process. Google is combining NFC with what they are calling PN65, a secure element chip paired with NFC.
12:25 p.m. Google has posted more information about Google Wallet on the Official Google Blog.
12:26 p.m. Bedier is showcasing how users can use the Google Wallet interface on the smartphone to search for offers and coupons at American Eagle, Subway and other merchants.
12:28 p.m. American Eagle is on stage with an actual point-of-sale system to showcase how the Google Wallet system works and how it can pass across credit cards, coupons and a loyalty card all in one pass. Very cool! This is called “Single Tap.”
12:30 p.m. Another founder of the Google Wallet project is on stage discussing how the “Single Tap” system works. This technology is something Google wants to continue to invest in and this fall it will be adding the ability to pass receipts back to the wallet and create dynamic cards, like loyalty program cards.
12:40 p.m. Citi is on stage discussing why they are excited about Google Wallet. Citi is “committed to leveraging this state of the art technology.” “Google Wallet represents true innovation.”
12:45 p.m. MasterCard is back on stage discussing their partnership. MasterCard sees itself “as the heart of commerce.” As an aside — I have spoken with MasterCard representatives about mobile payments and the company is fully committed to investing and innovating in the mobile payment space. This is part of what is a much larger vision for the company as a whole.
12:48 p.m. First Data is on stage. North American President Ed Labry says, “It wasn’t a question of if, but when” in regards to today’s announcement. Labry is taking us through the evolution of electronic payments — from the first credit card in the 1950s, to the inability to pay for groceries with a credit card in 1989, to the lack of credit card support at fast food restaurants in 1999. He makes good points about how quickly and naturally this space has evolved.
First Data processes $40 billion in payments a year, even though, as Labry says, “You’ve never heard of us unless you’re in the industry.” They process 50% of transactions in the U.S. Wow.
“We house 700 million cards and card numbers on pieces of plastic.” In the future, that piece of plastic will be stored on a phone. Fascinating.
12:54 p.m. Sprint is now on stage, discussing their role as a founding “carrier partner” with Google Wallet. Sprint wants to work with its OEM partners to help bridge the technology to support Google Wallet to the network.
The Nexus S 4G will support Google Wallet from day one.
12:56 p.m. Google is back on stage showing a retail partner video.
1:01 p.m. Again, Google will start field-testing today and plan on launching this summer. Google is now taking questions.
First question: For Offers, Google will be the merchant of record and that’s how they will make money on Google Offers.
“What happens if you lose your phone?” — If you lose your phone, cards can be deprovisioned over the air.
“How open is open? Can I use this on my Windows Phone 7 or iPhone? How many NFC payment locations are out there?” — Google is coy on the NFC numbers and says that “we will work with all platforms and partners, especially if they build NFC into their hardware.” The answer strikes us as hedging and non-specific, but this does seem to be more of a Google play, not necessarily an Android play.
“Why do you still need a signature?” — Partly a merchant decision, even though Google thinks the security in its implementation for payments is much higher. Seems more piece of mind than anything else.
“Google’s revenue opportunity?” — Again, Google makes money on Offers and is not charging on the payments side. That has huge implications.
Google also pointed out that the Google Offers app will be available for download, even for non-NFC Android phones. Users can also add an NFC sticker to their phone to add capability. NFC will be added to future Android devices.
CNBC is asking about data ownership and privacy issues. Google says that the data is owned by the various merchant partners and payment companies and the consumer itself.
1:19 p.m. That’s a wrap folks!
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