• by Shankar Gupta , September 7, 2005

An online job ad for a position at Google as a "fraud operations director, merchant payment solution," has fueled renewed speculation about whether the company intends to soon introduce a new electronic payment system, rumored to be called "Google Wallet."

Google earlier this year denied that it intended to introduce a payment system based on the Paypal model, but acknowledged that it was developing some sort of feature. "We do not intend to offer a person-to-person, stored-value payments system," CEO Eric Schmidt said during an interview with The Associated Press in June, when rumors of Google's electronic transfer system started circulating after The Wall Street Journal wrote about the service. "The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt said.

The ad, which appeared Sept. 2 on Yahoo!'s HotJobs and Craigslist, describes the position as "managing a team of fraud control specialists," "establishing sophisticated systems, policies and procedures for controlling fraud" and "participating in investigations with law enforcement."

JupiterResearch analyst Gary Stein predicted that Google Wallet could begin simply as an automatic system to transfer funds from Google to its AdSense affiliates, and from AdWords advertisers to Google. "They're constantly sending checks out, so it makes a lot of sense for them to say 'We can automate this process,'" said Stein. He also noted that the Yahoo! Publisher Network, one of Google AdSense's chief competitors, allows users to electronically transfer the profits from their on-site search ads to their accounts that pay for any search campaigns they may be running.

Of course, Stein added, once that system is in place, there's nothing to stop Google from expanding it further. "If they're looking to get some sort of system in place that will allow them to pay merchants, why not dream a little bit bigger and make that part of the sidebar," he said.