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Google Wallet May End Up Inside Your Actual Wallet
Several outlets are reporting, based on screenshots posted by Android Police that Google is (or "may be" — CNet calls the report "loosely sourced") about to introduce a lower-tech variant on its smartphone-based Google Wallet payment system. Instead of transferring payment information from an NFC-equipped phone, this would mean a physical payment card (like a conventional plastic credit or debit card), but one linked via Google's databanks to the user's existing bank or credit accounts. Upsides: less to carry, a simple way to suspend or cancel service on them (should the card be lost or stolen), and doesn't require you to carry your phone to make a credit or debit transaction — handy, since NFC readers are still thin on the ground. Downside: while perhaps no worse than putting the same information on your phone, it's one more step toward giving a third party all of your personal information in one place. A card that fits in a wallet probably makes a lot of sense: I live in a city with at least three pay-by-phone options in trials or fully available (CitiBank, Isis, and Google Wallet), but I can't buy ice cream or coffee with them yet. And there's no reason a card-shaped token couldn't use mag-stripes and NFC, too.
why you can't just pay in cash your coffee?.
As if I'm going to accept $100/m + x% transaction fees so you can buy a $1.00 icecream without cash.
Downside: while perhaps no worse than putting the same information on your phone, it's one more step toward giving a third party all of your personal information in one place.
If you use Google Wallet then Google has all this info anyway. The point made that it's easier to cancel this is also valid though, so I think on balance this may be a good thing. Presumably the information won't be stored on the card itself? Or will it? How does Google Wallet work? (I don't live in a country where we can use it)
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
This is called "going around your ass to get to your elbow". Cash works fine.
Besides, what's with everybody wanting to continue to make payment processors of all kinds, obscenely wealthy? Doesn't anybody think, that every time they use their plastic, that you're giving Visa/MC 2-3% of your purchase? I feel like the massive expansion of cards and payment processors (paypal, amazon, google, etc.) is an Idiocracy type of thing. It's freaking me out that people are so fucking stupid.
I don't respond to AC's.
My personal policy regarding Google: give them only the minimum information I must to use what services of theirs I must... (I have accounts with schools, some of which have used Google instead of manning up and having their own e-Mail system, because apparently they don't mind handing Google their students' private, personal information, despite the potential for evil Google could do!) Including using erroneous/made up information (birth date, etc.) when signing up for an account, and using NoScript to block Google Analytics, etc. when surfing the web.
I even obfuscate when I "Google" myself, by not typing in my entire first or last name... since I know they store everything that they have access to, and they know people periodically "Google" themselves. Note, I categorically refuse to use the word "Google" to mean search, except if actually using Google. In conversation, I usually say "websearch" or "grep". Google loves their name being synonymous with searching the interwebs, just as Johnson and Johnson loves their BandAid being synonymous with small, self-adhesive bandages, or the application of the same to wounds, since it is essentially free advertising.
(On this day, a year after Dump Your Bank Day, I am reminded by Slashdot about the whole bank-fee mass rip-off of the American people by banks, and it occurred to me that Credit Unions should jump on this bandwagon, and come up with a simple, catchy alternative word for the word "banking" that doesn't include the word "bank", and insinuate it into our daily language usage!)
So although I have a Samsung Galaxy III-S, I keep NFC turned OFF, have no plans ever to use it, and will not put such a card in my wallet while alternatives, (cash, cards, checks) exist. Google has enough information, I'm not going to give them more, considering how they're crypto-evil, despite their bullshit motto.
Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?
--- Keep the choice with the user..
How about sticking to things that aren't one button-press away from being locked down by some power-mad business magnate or corrupt politician. Let's stick to cash money, paper books, CDs, et cetera. If you don't see that they are trying to compress every aspect of your life into a single, neat little package complete with a killswitch, you deserve your fate.
seems to me that the big advantage is i can hide all my cc info behind a single account w a throwaway # as welll as 2-step authentication. if I normally lose my wallet, ive revealed every single card and its number and someone can start using it right away. but if I lose my Google Wallet card all I've lost is at most access to 1 of my credit cards and even then I can shut it off immediately.
Not only that but even when I use my card nobody gets access to the underline credit card numbers behind it. the only downside I can see is the danger that someone uses your card and you can't tell that fraud happened because it could be on any 1 of the numbers that you have given google. so you do have topay attention if you hsve a lot of cards. ...unless you have to confirm every transaction from your app with a pin..
With the Android phone, you have to worry about a very large attack surface area. With a Google wallet device, you do not have to worry about your latest download of Angry Birds keylogging your PIN entry field and performing a man-in-the-middle to steal all of your money.
No thanks. I'm fine with my credit card company, who haven't, on even a single occasion sent an EULA update allowing them to harvest my information for whoever knows what reason, and do not try to harvest my phone number sugar coating with "security concerns in case I lose my password".
This company has grown too large and is WAY too much intrusive in its current form.
For those of you with nothing to hide, please try to picture the following scenario: Google opens an HR company, specializing in delivering EXACTLY the person you like for the job. By which criteria? ENDLESS! They can practically deliver a person who has no interest in porn, spends 30% of his online time reading /. and likes the color Blue! They have all this information owing to their damned tracking cookies and gmail reading.
Call me paranoid, but I'd like to fall into the category of "No known bank account" at Google inc. Do no evil my ass
Obligatory xkcd link
I for one find this cartoon incredibly insightful and disturbing (and I do use google services, although I wish I wasn't).
What was this supposed to be: "A there's on reason a card-shaped token could use mag-stripes and NFC, too."?
With all those stupid discount cards, there's no room anymore.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"A there's on reason a card-shaped token could use mag-stripes and NFC, too."
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
It's obvious where this is heading... mandatory implants and constant surveillance for everyone
Doesn't anybody think, that every time they use their plastic, that you're giving Visa/MC 2-3% of your purchase?
You think there is no cost involved in handling cash? Cash is expensive to count, sort, deposit, track and prone to theft. Sure you are paying the credit card processors a few percent but merchants incur pretty much the same cost due to the overhead of handling cash. Seriously, cash is a major pain in the ass for merchants and that cost gets passed on to consumers. There's nothing wrong with paying cash but there is plenty of overhead involved with it.
I'd prefer cash. Around here, though, it's actively being marginalised, in the name of "security", but it's actually shifting risks to me and costing me privacy and flexibility to boot.
It really doesn't matter who owns your wallet, as long as it's not you it means you're being shafted. And this is why we need truly electronic payment mechanisms, not just online, but in our wallets too.
The problem is that the people who can give you such a thing have a perverse incentive not to. This includes, but is not limited to, google.
Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?
Because then you can leave your debit/credit card at home. If your wallet gets lost you log into your google account and detach the credit/debit card from your google card. While you still have to replace the google card it provides a potential layer of security. Also the google card provides the same effect as having a forwarding email address. You can change the bank card behind the google card without having to go to 50 different merchants to change the card they have on file. Actually pretty convenient.
As long as any replacement isn't fully anonymous, I will be a luddite on principle on matter of money. The potential for abuse and tracking are too great.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Ok, I watched the Google video.
Where do I get the wallet, with the nixie tubes, gummi bears, and manual combo lock on the outside??
If we wanted to read unedited crap, we'd go to Digg.
It sounds like those of us who didn't want to stop using cash and regular credit/debit cards won. We just said no to "pay for an expensive data plan to let Google play with us in the payment space". So now Google is fighting a rear-guard action by issuing something that sounds a lot like a credit card, but with Google Beta Sauce (TM) on it. No thanks. Google, if you want into the credit card space, that's a fine way to take your cash pile, diversify, and make the transition from start-up to "widow and orphan" stock. Just play by the rules everybody else does, and it'll be fine. You'll make plenty of money the good old fashioned way--by charging high interest rates and minimizing charge-offs, just like everybody else does in the space.
http://www.stanleygentlemen.com/
What problem does this technology and initiative solve? Whose problem does it solve?
As far as I can tell the only problem these things "solve" is that some intermediary wants to take some of some other intermediary's free money.
There seems to be no benefit to the person they are trying to convince to use it, unless the competition lowers interchange fees to merchants and merchants pass some of it back. And that is about as likely as new developments in simian rectal aviation.
it's pretty absurd a company that understands this future feels a need to move backwards
it's like early car companies building rocket skates for horses
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... the guy with the NFC scanner just walking close to you.
... sounds great. Have all your discount cards on your smartphone is a great idea.
Problems: ... not just iOS or even smartphone only (ie: should also be available via "dumb" phones).
- it needs to be supported by the "discount cards" you use for it to work.
- It needs to be more universal
- You are screwed if you don't own a mobile device.
BTW, I find it hilarious that people think that NFC is something Google created. I had an NFC chip on my American Express card since I got it over 10 years ago. And in all the years, I have probably used the feature maybe 3 times.
The same could be said for every credit card. At worst, you could say that Google is as bad as other existing credit card providers.
Credit card providers are subject to FTC regulations and such banking regulations as we still have. Google is not legally bound by either of those sets of federal regulations. So really you'd have to say that "Google is as bad as PayPal".
I'm sure I don't have to post the standard set of links to endless PatPal horror stories here.
Minimums and extra charges for using a card are forbidden by the contract with the card companies, not by state laws. But it is, as you note, ok to offer a cash discount, which is a weird loophole.
The states of CA, CO, CT, FL, KS, MA, ME, NY, OK, and TX have laws against surcharges, according to Bankcard Holders of America.
I like keeping things separated, and the idea of consolidating all services, databases, and resources into my smartphone scares me. As such, I'll be adding this technology to my "Do Not Want" list.
Right now, if I leave my phone at the beach or it drops from my pocket while getting out of the car, whoever finds it has nothing more than a couple of bucks worth of credit, and the dozen or so numbers in my address book. He won't even be interested in the hardware, which has no resale value.
I have interest in making my cellphone so valuable because it's linked into my credit line, etc. that people will want to kill for it.
The more I see how the 21st century is shaking out, the more I want to pay for things with cash and live in a cave in Montana with a weapons cash. And I'm only 41 - not old enough to tell you to get off my lawn yet, just old enough to see we're heading the wrong way.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
I was wondering why they stalled their Google Wallet NFC effort.... I now understand why. They short circuited the technology upgrade cycle.
I suspect we will see Visa, Mastercard, and Amex throwing their patents into the fight... round about 18 months from now.
That's unless you root your device and unlock the full Google Play store. It's stupid that Verizon would not allow Google Wallet, it's so convenient. I have the same tags on my credit cards, I wish I could do away with them entirely one day and just carry my phone.
"No downside unless you find having a complete record of where you shopped disturbing. A record that can be hauled into court, or at the very least used to target you for mind-control, i.e., advertising."
Advertising? I'd be really interested in seeing how they can meaningfully advertise based on my name only.
Forbes had a nice example of how Target has done just that: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
Don't harbor any illusions that Google won't use your Google Wallet purchasing information to come to similar, deeply personal, conclusions about you and then sell those conclusions to the highest bidder(s). Many credit card companies are already doing this and it's killing Google that they're missing out on all that juicy marketable information about you.
I can already walk into pretty much any major store tha in Australia and use "PayPass" or whatever it is, just put my card near the reader for about 2 seconds and it's paid. It is great for small transactions, but shits met it's a Credit transaction, not an Eftpos transaction.
So can someone tell me what this Google Card does that my current card from the bank doesn't??
This will not come cheap. We have something like this in Europe already. You can load up a card for up to 200 Euros and pay by inserting the card into slots. In reality there is a hidden fee for charging the card. Mine was 15 Euros for loading 10 Euros on the card. I felt stupid after the account was charged at the end of the month. Some banks may charge the fees on an annual basis, so that customers rarely realize that they are being tricked, if they are not reading account statements often enough. It is a completely pointless system that hides the fees behind convenience. Banks never are interested in giving up transaction fees. Tap here, tap there. Insert card into slot. Real cash is still the cheapest version for small transactions. The European Commission wanted to improve the situation, but the banks are always two steps ahead of the game. They gave up transaction fees between European countries, but changed the cards to new ones that are useless outside of Europe. The new card itself is 5 Euros a month, if you want to have the same features that the old one had. The change to the new card was justified by security improvements and new features that you will have to pay for, if you ever use them. Banks are just clean bastards with money.
~ Best man at your service.
Earth To Google.
Do Not Want.
Because then Google wont know how you spend every penny. Don't you ever think about other people like the advertising giants, they have feeling and goals as well.
Rocket Surgeon.
Google has enough of my information as it is, I have 0 interest in providing and even more complete picture for them to market to.
Same goes for Microsoft.
Seriously, is anyone interested in this Google Wallet thing? How many times do you leave your home without your wallet but with your cellphone? Protip to Google: You must first find a way to create a false need, then you release the product that fills said false need.