Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

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And, they replaced Google Wallet years back with Google Pay, but now Google Wallet is back, so that you can do the same thing you already do with Google Pay, but with a few extra types of cards that Google Pay can't store because, I dunno, "reasons"? lol

>Google Wallet’s official rollout is the latest step in the long history of Google’s payment app variations. The company combined Google Wallet and Android Pay in 2018 to create Google Pay, a single app that included tap-to-pay, tickets, and loyalty programs under one umbrella that worked across Android and Google Chrome. In 2020, Google Pay had a big app refresh to pull in peer-to-peer payments, deals, and other services.

>Now Google announced Wallet’s comeback at its Google I/O event in May, splitting things up again to create a dedicated home for payment cards, airplane tickets, government IDs, vaccination proof, and even car keys.

>Users will be able to use the app to pay at vendors where Google Pay is accepted.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/20/23270301/google-wallet-re...

Part of the problem was that in 2020 they pushed out a new Google Pay, which was designed not based on google accounts, but using phone number tied login, specifically because that approach was necessary to get any real adoption in India. But after succeeding with the new app in India, the people behind the new app got approval to push it out on everyone else. (Calling it a "refresh" is a complete joke. It was a completely different app in all respects that shared only the name it stole from the older Google Pay).

This went fairly poorly. For example, people in the rest of the world wanted to be able to use their google account. This approach had problems like not being able to support a website version. The wallet website still existed and was used to manage payment cards that chrome might suggest, but was no longer connected to the "google pay" service.

The people behind the new Google Pay all resigned or were pushed out. And google decided to back peddle, and move to something more like the old Google Pay. But they wisely decided not to use the Google Pay name again. (It does not help that there is also yet another unrelated Google Pay service used for In app or website based purchases). So they decided to revive the Google Wallet name.

They were able to move to a somewhat-sane solution everywhere else, but in the few markets where the new GPay launched, Wallet is... sort of integrated into GPay, or something?

GPay was/is also one of those nice services where they never made it work for Workspace/G Suite accounts.

Google should pay me a 8 figure salary as a product manager to tell them to add phone number login to their existing app and put it behind a region restriction if required rather building a second parallel app since apparently no one there is willing to say it. And before people point out the benefits of having a clean slate I'll point out all the cash they burned doing it this way, which they could have saved by just giving me 10 or 15 million dollars.

DMs open for anyone else who wants my genius-level advice.

I think there was an Android Wallet app too at some point.

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