Google is mulling over the changes to improve its Google Wallet mobile payment system amid the reports of slower adoption and exit of two key executives. Google Wallet was launched last year in September and allows users to pay for items by simply tapping the phone on payment device at the time of checkout. It is only available in the United States currently.
As per reports in
Bloomberg, company is thinking of sharing revenues with the telecom operators to get them on-board as two major telcos AT&T and Verizon haven't yet supported the system and are working on their own. As, there is currently no incentive for operators to adopt Wallet, Google might give them a portion of the proceeds when a consumer accepts a special offer or deal available on the Wallet app.
On the other hand, Google's Wallet plans took a beating when one of the original creators of the system Jonathan Well left the company to start his own mobile shopping firm and he was soon joined by Google Wallet lead product manager Marc Freed-Finnegan. Mountain View is now adding more employees to work on Google Wallet.
According to various reports, the initial response to Wallet has been lukewarm and only 50,000 to 100,000 users have downloaded the app till now and very few of them are actually using it. One of the major challenges is the lack of smartphones with NFC hardware.
With the rival ISIS system from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile set to debut in next few months, Google is also looking to sidestep the operators totally. So, company is now planning to stop using phones to authenticate the payments, which require assistance from telecom operator, but use Google servers to approve the payment and then clear it with retailer. However, this will require a lot of tweaking on the hardware and software part to make it work.