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The Australian arm of Google Inc. has received a financial-services license from the Australia Securities and Investments Commission, removing one barrier the search engine would have in establishing an online payment system in the country. Though the United States-based company has not announced plans to launch its Google Checkout service in Australia, the license allows Google to handle digital transactions in the country. "Getting the license is just a matter of doing basic due diligence, but there's nothing planned at this stage," a spokesperson for Google Australia tells CardLine Global. "We don't have any timetable at this stage to bring checkout to Australia." The company already offers the service in the U.S. and United Kingdom. The service enables consumers to store their credit and debit card data on automatic checkout forms. Australia has seen significant growth in online payments in recent years, Shaun Cornelius, CEO of InfoChoice, an Australia-based Web site that compares financial products, tells CardLine Global. If Google were to offer its service in Australia, the firm's market share largely would depend on the incentives it provides merchants, he says. Such incentives could include rebates for advertising on Google, Cornelius adds. "Google obviously has strong relationships with most Australian e-commerce players and will be leveraging them to gain adoption," he says. Consumer groups and some Australian financial authorities likely will welcome Google's entry into the country's online-payment market. An effort last year by online auction site eBay Inc. to require customers to use its PayPal payment option for most transactions met fierce resistance from consumers and the Reserve Bank of Australia, which worried about reduced competition for online payments. EBay eventually dropped the plan (CardLine Global, 21 Aug. 2008).
