Is Google Payments System A Good Buy Or AGoodbye?

PALO ALTO, Calif. - (06/14/06) – Internet giant Google isexpected to unveil its long-awaited online payments system nextweek, an attempt to carve out a larger portion of the worldwideweb. The system, called Gbuy (pronounced G’by), is supposedto form the backbone of a payments system that will facilitate bothconsumer-to-merchant and consumer-to-consumer transactions. Googleis expected to allow merchants to use the system for free duringthe beta stage, thereby developing merchant relationships. Afterbeta, Google is expected to charge a small fee (1.5% to 2%) pertransactions, lower than the 1.9% to 2.9%, plus 30 cents pertransaction, charged by eBay’s PayPal service. On its searchresult pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy asa “trusted GBuy merchant,” to encourage consumers toview the merchant as safe, and thus, increase click rates. GBuywill also be another way for the Google to charge merchants morefor advertising. The payment system captures all transaction dataflow, and lets Google see which categories and keyword bids producethe most hits and sales, potentially creating a huge database offinancial transactions among users.