First Data

Google Wallet Goes Live, But You Probably Won't Be Able to Use It Yet

Frederic Lardinois

Sep 19, 2011 — 1 min read

As rumored, Google just announced that it is officially launching its cell phone-based mobile payment solution Google Wallet today. After introducing the service in May and launching a limited trial at the time, Google today launched it nationwide, in partnership with Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and First Data. For now, however, you won’t be able to just swipe your phone past one of the many compatible PayPass payment terminals unless you use Google’s flagship Nexus S phone on Sprint’s network. Given these limitations, today’s “launch” is really more of an expanded field trial than anything else.

MasterCard and Sprint Only

For now, restricting Google Wallet to one credit card company, phone and carrier means that most of us won’t be able to use it anytime soon. Google hopes that American Express, Visa and Discover will also come on board soon. These three companies made their near-field communication (NFC) specifications available today. These, says Google, “could enable their cards to be added to future versions of Google Wallet.” It’s not clear if these companies are really interested in partnering with Google though (Google says it’s “working” with them in its headline, but the actual announcement isn’t very clear about this point).

Do Mainstream Users Care?

As I have argued in the past, I’m not sure the market in the U.S. is really ready for NFC-enabled payment solutions yet. Those PayPass terminals Google is using, after all, are mostly sitting unused today, as consumers and card issuers haven’t even adopted NFC-enabled credit cards yet. For most users, paying by phone is also more of a hassle than just swiping a credit card.

I’m still standing by my conclusion from back in May: “Using an NFC-enabled electronic wallet simply doesn’t offer enough benefits right now, isn’t significantly more convenient than just using a credit card and depends on phones that aren’t available yet (and that can easily run out of battery).”

Return From the Cloud

Renting servers in the cloud isn't cheap. Traditionally, the argument has been that it's still cheaper than buying your own hardware and having a dedicated staff managing servers. Plus, you get to benefit from the innovations that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Co. are bringing to market.

The Stack Overfloweth

Another busy week in tech news, but mostly in areas outside of my immediate beat (goodbye, Apple Car), allowing me to focus on just a few stories and even get out of the house for a few in-person meetings. This week, I got to chat with GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke.

🤔The one where I ask questions and have no answers

One nice thing about writing a newsletter is that it’s a break from the day-to-day hustle to get stories out of the door. It’s also a chance to go back to some older stories and see how they played out – and sometimes it only takes a week for

Gemini Season

The last few months have been rough for the news business. I was going to write something about that last week, but then it was TechCrunch's time to get hit with a round of layoffs (my team and I got spared, thankfully). The company also shut down our