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.

Comments

Let Google have access to my bank account?

[OldKingCole]

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

Re:This is what my banks card is for.

[p0p0]

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.

Re:cash

[TheGratefulNet]

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.