Multichannel: Google Merges its Payment Offers
- Google has announced the merger of Google Checkout and Google Wallet, its e-payment platform and mobile solution. Started in May 2011, the mobile NFC platform Google Wallet had already been linked to Google Offers rewards programmes. Google intends to rationalise its payment offer.
- Google Checkout’s should officially be transitioned after the Christmas holyday season. Customers using this solution will not have to enter previously provided information but they will have to agree to the terms of a new contract so that these pieces of information can be migrated to Google Wallet.
- merchant fees will still be assessed based on monthly sales: from 2.9% of the amount +30 cents for figures below 3,000 dollars, to 1.9% +30 cents for amounts equal or superior to 100,000 dollars.
- Google Checkout was launched in 2006 and allowed Internet users to purchase items with a gallery of merchants aggregated by Google accessible through the browser. This online payment service failed to meet its target and did not manage to challenge PayPal (as initially intended).
- Beyond this setback, Google interestingly chose to replace the Web-based solution with a mobile, multichannel, one. This example further shows that the frontier partitioning payment media is currently being blurred to favour multimedia offers (more suited to customers’ and merchants’ new requirements).
- Only few figures have been made available but, according to Oglesby’s calculations, Google Checkout generated about 8 billion dollars payments volume per year.