February 6, 2015
Google Wallet was launched more than 3 years ago and still hasn’t been able to make a mark in the mobile wallet space. One of the giants in tech has been backing this digital wallet service but we still don’t see it making waves in the payments industry. Some might even say whether Google still has high hopes for its Wallet service. Consider that Google Wallet was not among those 20 apps that Google made mandatory for mobile manufacturers to incorporate in handsets as part of Android certification - perhaps this is a result of blocking by the Softcard/Isis investor mobile operators, but the fact that it has not gained enough market leverage to push back on a dying Softcard is telling.
And then as compared to Apple Pay, Google Wallet has a lot of catching up to do to match the traction for Apple’s revolutionary mobile wallet service. Within a span of merely months, Apple Pay is making an impact on consumer behavior and merchant adoption, which has been a challenge for Google Wallet form the very beginning. Here are some aspects that become evident when we compare Apple Pay with Google Wallet:
Google Wallet has been through the phase in which the industry had almost given up on use of NFC in mobile payments. Apple Pay turned out to be an influencer in this regard and there are a number of POS manufacturers who have actually started coming up with new NFC enabled POS systems as they witness the rising adoption of Apple Pay and NFC based payments on the whole. That is the level of impact that Google Wallet needs to attain in the market to make a strong comeback.
Google Wallet is indeed trying hard to bounce back. After some spiffy updates in July last year, Google Wallet added more features like splitting of payments, deeper bank account integration and others. Google Wallet has headed out of the US market as well and is now available for remittance service through Gmail in UK.
With NFC payments getting a booster dose, Google Wallet does have an opportunity ahead and overcoming the challenges should now be the top priority to ensure its relevance, and perhaps sruvival itself.