Earlier today Google hosted a little Google Wallet Q & A with their head product manager Robin Dua. This quick session was mainly for developers but we learned a few interesting facts about the future of Google Wallet. For one, they mentioned person to person payments could be in our future. More details below.
The live Google Wallet Developer Q & A is over, but you’ll be able to catch it all again on YouTube later today by clicking here. While speaking about the future of Wallet Robin Dua briefly hinted at the fact we could be seeing person to person payments in the future. This could potentially compete directly with Square mobile payments, and even Paypal. They better focus on security and privacy though.
While Google Wallet is still not widely available the services it offers are awesome. Once more carriers and retail stores get on board hopefully the technology and idea behind it can gain more traction. Since Google added full support for all major credit/debit cards earlier this month I’ve probably used it 15 times.
Speaking of carrier support. According to Android Police a viewer asked a question regarding the lack of penetration and why Wallet was only supported on a small number of carriers (and blocked on Verizon.) Dua responded by saying Google was in “active negotiations with a number of carriers,” and that he “hoped to have new partnerships to announce soon.” While that doesn’t mean negotiations are going well, the fact that he hopes to announce new partnerships soon could be a good sign. Currently only one major Network actually officially supports Google Wallet, and my Verizon Galaxy Nexus only works after a bit of hackery.
Hopefully more details are released soon because we’d love to see Google Wallet be more widely available.
[via Google Developer Blog]
