Google Wallet might be just a bit late on schedule, but it seems that its still in news and is widely being notified. There were discussions in May, earlier this year that Google Wallet was being accessible for quite a small number, which was to grow once it moved up from its initial count. The count for merchant and retail partners are only handful and for the handsets, its just one which is the NFC-enabled Sprint Nexus S (although you can affix a sticker to your phone that makes it NFC-capable.) It was even detailed that Android handsets which would come up in the future would embed an NFC chip.
The availability of Google Wallet is restricted in the count, which in fact makes its launch largely symbolic in many respects. However, because of Google’s brand clout and visibility, mobile payments are now on the radar. This would have the ‘old gold’ rule come intact that competition would give birth to innovation. This can be said as for Google in this field the competitors are many and its list include Visa, Amex, Intuit, PayPal, wireless carriers, Square and others. However, NFC is not a choice many of these competitors are opting for. NFC-free products are being used as an option be Square and PayPal. This would still maintain suspense on how quick would NFC grab its consumer share.
Consumer behavior cannot change in a split second, which would mean that in the near future, the task would be as difficult as it has been current circumstances. Consumers have always preferred using plastic cards which has been handy and comfortable for most of the consumers. Moreover, the familiarity of these plastic cards for the consumers cannot be compared to this new technology. The change in this case is possible if the users get an incentive on adopting the mobile payment option. Regardless of these barriers, there was an anticipated launch of Google Wallet, in the US.
For Google, another roadblock is related to security. Consumers fear the security factor assuming that the security fear is more in the option of NFC payments, but the fact is that NFC payments is much more secure as compared to the current plastic payments.
For Google, there is still a few points to be happy about. The most important point is that Google Wallet would be a closed loop transaction yielding actionable data for marketers. One might notice that it has a representation of a type of “holy grail” for marketing analytics, as one track online to an actual offline transaction. (Calls are a surrogate for offline transactions.)
Promotion from Google has even been a costly affair as the Google Wallet ad features Jason Alexander as Seinfeld’s George Costanza (and his infamous overstuffed wallet). Surprisingly, the ad was out in August, but it was brought to the notice of people. The ad can be viewed as below:
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Google has come up with this improvement in Wallet which has been encouraging and it seems like this time it might be here to stay.