Soz, web devs: Google snatches its Wallet off the table

If you sell digital goods on a website using Google Wallet to take payment, you have a little over three months to find an alternative. The service is being “retired” on 2 March 2015 and will not be replaced. Google argues that there are enough alternative solutions, which might translate to mean “no one was using it”. The …

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is notorious for developing something, pushing it (rather forcibly at times I might add) into consumer markets, getting everyone to use it, become part of their lives, and then dropping it later.

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you paid for something on a website that only uses Google Wallet, let alone integrate as the sole payment system it in a website?

[JasonT]

I'm guessing if they got anywhere near "everyone" using it, they would not be yanking it.

[J. R. Hartley]

This is bad

PayPal must be stopped.

[localzuk]

Re: This is bad

Don't worry, Amazon has an alternative...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is bad

PayPal is not your pal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is bad

PayPal is not your pal.

I'm not your pal buddy

[Paul Dx]

Re: This is bad

I'm not your buddy, friend

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: This is bad

I'm not your friend, chum

[stephajn]

Re: This is bad

Couldn't agree more. Spent months building up an online ordering system around the PayPal recommended REST API of theirs, assured that THIS is the way to go forward with any new development, and only upon release day (today) do I find out that in their Live environment the REST API isn't supported for doing Direct Credit Card operations in Canada???

Not cool PayPal....NOT cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is bad

While I agree that Paypal must be stopped, so must Google so replacing one with the other was never a viable solution.

[Gene Cash]

Made paypal look good

If you have an issue s a seller with Paypal, you can at least get to a human (who'll tell you to sod off, but that's another story)

If you're having a problem with Google Wallet, there was no hope of any tech support. Google does not admit that humans work there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Made paypal look good

That's just Google in general.

Note to Google, while Android is open source a lot of your services aren't, so you need to provide support.

[Richard 33]

Re: Made paypal look good

This isn't true actually. When I recently had a problem with Google Wallet, I was able to get through to a human pretty quickly - they emailed me back within an hour. Unfortunately they told me I had to fax them copies of my passport and birth certificate in order to continue with my task (buying a Nexus tablet). At that point I abandoned my GW account and bought it through Amazon instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

My solution

I moved over to stripe. Good service so far so would recommend them if you need an easy integration.

[Paul IT]

Too late to the party

I offered Google Wallet as part of payment on my website, along side PayPal and not one person paid using Google Wallet except Google when they added 1p to verify the account.

I guess PayPal using their catch line "People Rule" have the market share.

Google does do some good things but were too late to the online payment party.

[Anonymous Coward]

No surprises really

hardly comes as a big shock it has been a pretty big failure for Google. The thing is though we need a rival for Paypal and now Apple Pay because no competition is unhealthy. Android is lacking an alternative to Apple Pay they've been caught short with that. It'll be tough to come up with a rival too as Google will want a cut and with Apple the finger print seems a good way to authenticate but that is far from a standard scenario on Android. In fact I can only think of two companies that have used finger print readers on Android phones...

I think Samsung will probably try an Apple pay clone, but their best bet is just teaming up with paypal