August 1st, 2012 2 Comments » | POSTED BY ROB
Google Wallet Upgraded; Adds More Credit Cards, Changes Security
Google has announced some fairly major changes to its Wallet mobile payment system.
Firstly, it has announced that it will now accept cards from Visa, American Express and Discover. In order to do this, and to improve the speed of future integrations, they’ve moved the security of the system away from individuals’ Android phones, and on to their secure servers.
“To support all credit and debit cards, we changed our technical approach to storing payment cards. The Google Wallet app now stores your payment cards on highly secure Google servers, instead of in the secure storage area on your phone. A wallet ID (virtual card number) is stored in the secure storage area of the phone, and this is used to facilitate transactions at the point of sale. Google instantly charges your selected credit or debit card.”
This new way of securing Google Wallet means that only a “virtual credit card number” is kept in the secure area of your phone, but of course also means handing over your credit card numbers to Google for them to look after, which will no doubt scare some people.
Google have also developed a remote wipe feature, meaning that should you lose your phone, you can go to the Google Wallet web interface and disable the device from afar (as long as it can connect to the device).
If you trust Google’s security, these developments are good news; opening up to more credit card providers will increase Wallet’s appeal and ease its takeup.
Just a couple of drawbacks. It’s still only available in the US, and the list of devices that it supports is pretty limited.
Here’s a new video giving an overview of Google Wallet:
Related Posts
- Google Wallet (May 27, 2011)
- Google Wallet Launches (September 19, 2011)
- Video: Google Wallet In Action (October 17, 2011)
- Paypal Announces Its Own Wallet (November 3, 2011)
- Will A Google Phone Be Your Next Wallet? (December 15, 2010)
Tags: Google Wallet, mobile, payments
2 Comments on “Google Wallet Upgraded; Adds More Credit Cards, Changes Security”
Nick from CreditScoreHelp.cuk, September 9th, 2012
Any idea when / if this will be coming in the UK?
stev@ expertinsurance, September 18th, 2012
I love this google wallet Upgade. After this upgrade, we can use payment device very easy way. The best change which I like the most is the security. All the transactions can be stopped, If we disable our account.
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