Visa, AmEx, Discover Sign On for Google Wallet

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Visa and Visa Europe announced that Google had received a worldwide license to the VISA payWave contact-less payment system that is installed in hundreds of thousands of retail locations around the world.

No timetables were specified for when the app and hardware would be compatible with the Visa, AmEx and Discover cards.

The licensing deal with Visa allows banks that issue the brand's cards to let their customers add their credit, debit and prepaid accounts to the Google Wallet app. The smartphone app works in tandem with near field communication hardware to enable the consumer to simply wave the phone near or tap a payment terminal in order to make the charge.

Currently, Google Wallet only operates through the hardware on one NFC-capable Google branded handset running on the Sprint network.

Google formally announced that the Google Wallet system had gone active late yesterday. Its goal, the company says in a blog post from Osama Bedler, vice president, payment, is "to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets."

While Google appears to be getting support from the major credit card brands, it remains to be seen what technology the hardware manufacturers and other network carriers adopt.

Mobile payments represent an incredibly lucrative revenues stream for any player that gets a piece of it. Sprint is the only carrier to partner with Google so far on the Wallet venture, and Sprint is also the only major carrier absent from the rival coalition of networks pursuing the ISIS m-payment model.

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T formed the ISIS partnership to pursue their own common standard for enacting secure mobile payments. Ultimately, because the carriers still underwrite the cost of their customer handsets that control the hardware that works on their network, they wield considerable control over the system.

It is still unclear how third-party applications will be able to work with NFC payment systems. Google is promising a more "open" system that presumably would allow other apps for things like budgeting, loyalty programs, and couponing to work with Google Wallet on a phone. It envisions a larger ecosystem of apps and services that are tied to the phone-as-credit-card model.

For marketers, that opens up the opportunity for putting their apps and offers at the point and moment of sale.

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