Google Wallet has been in news for most of the time, this year. With Sprint providing support for the mobile payment system (although Sprint is rumored to put together its own payment system), more and more Android users are finding themselves in a position to finally take advantage of Wallet.
Now it doesn’t even matter if the carriers aren’t receptive, as users still continue to find ways to force the app onto their handsets. Google, however, has been at work and has managed to add some new functionality to Wallet, and has released a major update with support for new cards and some improved security features.
As of now, the only credit cards supported by Wallet were Citi MasterCards. This left many users stuck with buying credit on Google’s prepaid card. But Google has worked out a way to let you use any old credit card with the system. But, as always, there are a few catches.
The good news first. Wallet will now let you use any Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover card, credit or debit, to make payments. Once you use a card with Google, it will automatically save the details to your account. Then, when you use the Wallet later, a virtual Google MasterCard will be created for the purposes of the transaction, but all the charges will be deducted from the actual card you affiliated with the account.
And here’s the catch we were talking about. To get it to work without agreements with all the banks, they make the phone bring up a virtual MasterCard linked to your bank card, and that’s what the merchant sees. What this means is that you’ll see a Google Wallet charge instead of a store specific charge on your card statement. In reality, there are loads of problems with this method, including worse finance management, untraceable charges, and even possibly problems with refunds. The only way for it to work properly is to use Citi MasterCards.
The company, nonetheless, has also integrated a remote disable feature for safety. So if you lose the phone, you can disable Wallet on it. It’s a welcome addition after all the controversy with safety Google has had. The only thing left now is to wait a bit more and see how the Google Wallet actually fares.
