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Google Wallet May End Up Inside Your Actual Wallet

Posted by timothy on from the one-neck-to-wring dept.

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.

9 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. cash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    why you can't just pay in cash your coffee?.

    1. Re:cash by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      cash gives us privacy over our transactions.

      "we can't have that, now, citizen! be a good little sheep, agree to the Shiney(tm) we give you and stop questioning what our end goals are."

      hey, if you are too dumb to realize you are being played, maybe you deserve to be played. come back in a few years and tell us how good it was for you to surrender your buying habits to google or some other behemoth.

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  2. Around your ass... by DogDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Around your ass... by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Cash doesn't leave a record. Some of us like the record.

      you miss the point, I think. the point is that you get to CHOOSE, even on a per-trans basis, do you want a record or not?

      I guarantee you that you don't want 100% of your transactions recorded. are you really that open with your life? really? and you don't ever see any misuse coming from this info farm you are providing?

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      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    2. Re:Around your ass... by foofish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think that there is a clause with Google Wallets (or with any credit/debit/whatever card) that you have to use that form of payment for ALL of your purchases. If he has a transaction he doesn't want recorded, he is perfectly free and able to pay for that transaction with cash.

      I like the record keeping functions of my debit card, but there are some things that I still pay for in cash. You don't have to make one or the other a way of life.

  3. This is what my banks card is for. by bjwest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?

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    --- Keep the choice with the user..
    1. Re:This is what my banks card is for. by p0p0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the general plan is that you could unify different accounts onto this card and access them all just from the Google Wallet card. As well in the event of you losing the card, all it would take is the deactivation of this one card instead of multiple cancellations from multiple institutions.

  4. It is more secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  5. Let Google have access to my bank account? by OldKingCole · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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