Google Continues Mobile Payments Retreat with Prepaid Card Launch

Google announced the launch of a prepaid card linked to Google Wallet yesterday. The move continues Google Wallet’s move away from contactless payments using near-field communication (NFC) and brings it in line with the Isis mobile wallet, which incorporates the American Express Serve prepaid card.

Prospective users of the Google Wallet prepaid card, which is a MasterCard-branded card and allows ATM access to funds, need to be in the US and hold a verified Google Wallet account.

Google also announced the release of a holidays reward program for Google Wallet alongside the card announcement. A few restaurant chains and Amtrak were named as participating companies.

Google Wallet launched in September 2011 and has been the object of intense media scrutiny ever since. The service has undergone numerous growing pains —  launching then shuttering a “virtual prepaid card,” testing then abandoning a Discover card attached to the wallet and moving away from NFC as the facilitator of contactless payments.

Mobile bank account Moven, a service that also bet on contactless, was forced to distribute NFC stickers and issue a debit card as well. It seemed the world (or the U.S., anyway) was not ready for contactless payment, nor was Apple.

Earlier this year was a dark time for mobile wallets. Isis and MCX stalled, and Google Wallet also appeared to be flagging, but the May 2013 announcement that funds could be sent via Gmail — with a linked Google Wallet account — suddenly made Google Wallet an attractive option for Gmail’s 425 million users.

P2P payments allowed users to exchange money with each other, but with Google Wallet’s point-of-sale tie-ins at Jamba Juice, Walgreens and other retailer going mostly unused, getting money out of a Google Wallet account was a more difficult prospect than getting it in.

The Mastercard-branded prepaid card, which can be ordered here and is said to arrive within 10 to 12 days, closes that loop. It also serves as a hedge against the possibility of mobile phone-based payments at the point-of-sale not happening. Purchases on the card trigger notifications on the mobile app, so the card can be seen as a halfway step to mobile wallets much in the manner of the recently overhyped Coin. And because it’s Google, there will be data generated from the card’s use that can be put to use in marketing.