Google More than Doubles Mobile-Wallet Use with Open System

Google says use of its mobile wallet app has more than doubled since it modified Google Wallet to more easily allow consumers to link their credit and debit cards.

Issuers are also fast becoming participants in the redesigned Google Wallet. Discover Financial Services, Barclaycard US, Green Dot and Silicon Valley Bank all provide some level of support, ranging from card art to website integration, to make it easier for consumers to use enroll their cards with Google Wallet, according to a blog post by Google.

"In the weeks since we released a new version of the Google Wallet app that supports all credit and debit cards, usage has more than doubled," Frank T. Young, the commerce business development manager for Google Wallet, said in the Sept. 13 blog post. "Consumers have immediately grasped the benefit of being able to use any card when shopping in-store and online."

He did not provide specific subscriber or transaction numbers.

The modified Google Wallet, announced last month, allows consumers to enroll any issuer's card even if that issuer has not partnered with Google. Previously, Google required customers of non-partner banks to fund a Google-branded virtual prepaid card account to make point of sale purchases with Google Wallet. Google is ending the prepaid-card option next month. 

Until it modified the enrollment process for Google Wallet, Google had just one issuer partner, Citigroup, which has worked with Google since the mobile wallet's launch.

"Direct integration is no longer a prerequisite for having your banks’ cards in Google Wallet," Young wrote on Google's blog.

"Issuers no longer need to connect their systems directly to ours," he wrote. "We have completely eliminated the cost and complexity for issuers to offer their customers their cards in a mobile wallet. What was previously an effort that could take many months, cost millions, and require complex orchestration among many parties has been reduced to a few simple steps."

Two of Google's new partners, Discover Financial Services and Barclaycard US, are also early partners of the Isis mobile-wallet venture, which was formed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. Isis, which planned to test its mobile-wallet system this summer, recently chose to delay those tests.