Hi everyone. I've been working on this at Google for a while and would be happy to answer any questions you might have. If you don't want to ask here, feel free to email me at <my username> AT google.com. There might be a delay in responding if I get a lot of messages or if you have a particularly challenging question.
My question is: when you send emails like "it has come to our attention... fraudulent activity..." [1] [2] and confiscate $30,000+ earnings by shutting down long-standing AdSense accounts, will you do the same to the entire Gmail accounts, or just to the money transferring functionality?
One would have to be a fool to use this, knowing Google's arrogant heavy-handed history of dealing with AdSense publishers (and an absolute lack of any meaningful customer care): this is why Google Wallet has never taken off as an alternative to PayPal in the first place.
Paypal is terrible, but at least you can get on the phone and talk to someone when things get hairy. Every time I have google support issues I end up waiting days or weeks for automatic replies that don't even address the issue.
To the sibling post: actually Rackspace has horrible support. They regularly experience downtime and outages and never notify customers or update their status blog. Can you get someone on the phone? Yes. Do they have anything of value to offer you? No. My favorite was when they referred me to their twitter feed, which hadn't (at the time) been posted to in 9 months.
That's not really horrible. Horrible is when AdSense shuts your account with $15k/mo revenue, confiscates $30k earnings already on the account, refuses to tell you why (a template response) and there is absolutely no human you can call and discuss this.
How does Stripe have great support? I had to wait two days for a reply. The advice I got was very good, but the response time doesn't make for "great" support.
Stripe has amazing support, even proactively reaching out when weird things happen:
Got a 500 error back from their API once and had an email from one of their engineers in my inbox almost immediately after to find out what happened and resolve it (my http lib was using stale DNS).
Paypal is actually much better. When you reach about 10k/mo, they give you a special representative from the account management team, with a special phone number, and those guys are quite smart and easily available. First hand knowledge.
As the service is connected to your email and your Google+ accounts, it's possible that Google can determine actual frauds with much more accurately than, for example, Paypal. Google is a data company after all, and I'd be surprised if they don't employ big data techniques to build trust networks and pinpoint frauds.
No one can determine fraud with absolutely no false positives. If there is no way to "appeal", then those false positives (no matter how few) will be thoroughly screwed.
Let's say I use this to pay for something I've purchased online, and I later realize the seller is a scammer and want to issue a chargeback. Will that be possible? What are your plans for this situation?
If something goes wrong with my account, can my account be locked and my balance frozen? Will it be possible to contact a real human who knows what they're doing to get that fixed?
Well, that's a good answer. I feel like this is something one can't do for 99% of other google products although I haven't tried it. Is this as rare as I think it is?
You realize that Google does not have the best reputation when it comes to talking to a real human being? Personally, I hope this is where that begins to change.
I had a prepard card setup with Google Wallet when it first came out. Then that card was discontinued by Google. I had $100 loaded onto that card. When I asked Google for a refund (September of 2012), first the form to submit a refund request wasn't working, then I couldn't get a hold of a human to talk to. After doing some googling (maybe 1-2 hours), I found the phone number to call customer service. When I got to talk to a person, they were unaware of the Prepaid card being discontinued. Because of this, they were also unable to give me a refund. Then I called again, seemed like the same person picked up, and I told again to fill in the online request form. Somehow, the second time, the form did work. But it's been way over the allotted time to receive my refund from Prepaid refund, how does Google expect to send money and actually get my rent, deposit, gift, or anything I use Paypal for to not be held up on their servers somewhere?
I'm a software engineer at Google and I just wanted to let you know how to get your money back!
I'm sorry if we weren't properly indexed when the card was retired, but as of now searching for 'google wallet prepaid refund' returns the correct link at the top. (With the phone support number on the 'Contact Us' sub-page listed there[1].)
Since we had special support staff for this refund (and Wallet in general), I suspect that the number you found was not the correct one, which would explain the confusion. I've used the Wallet customer support, and have always been impressed, so I'm hoping that really is what happened.
I can't tell you why you haven't received your funds, but the customer support reps at that number are authorized (with your consent) to look up that information and help you out.
No. The only way to 'send' bitcoins in email is sending the keys for the coins you still own; this (of course) is stupid, since you retain control, so it becomes a race to see which one of the people with the keys transfers them to an address they solely own first.
Is there any chance of getting your Gmail account shut down because of suspicious transactions etc with wallet? I understand that with a service like wallet Google will need to shut down accounts that look like they might be fraudulent (even though often it might turn out not to be) but it would be good to have a guarantee that they won't take the Gmail account down with it.
Also directly under the line "Google Wallet is now integrated into Gmail", accompanied by screenshots. I wasted time looking for it, too, before coming back and seeing the "* ha ha not really" text.
I want to make use of this sooner rather than later. Is the rollout completely random or determined by some other meaningful factor. Lets say I connect my bank account with Google Wallet now, would that put me in line above someone without a bank account associated with their Google Wallet?
The rollout is such that when you successfully claim money you've been sent, you'll be able to send money from Gmail about 30 minutes after that. (It will be a couple weeks if your account is on an Apps domain and your domain administrator has not opted in to the faster feature release cycle.)
We're sending money to the I/O attendees first, and then they'll be able to send money to their friends, and so on.
As a counterpoint, I never use Interac for payments precisely because I can use my credit card and get all the benefits that offers: rewards, zero liability, deferred payment, etc. The only place I use debit is at Tim Horton's if I don't have cash as they don't accept Visa.
This looks awesome, but not at all core to Google's core revenue generators (gmail isn't, either, and this is on top of gmail...). Not to be a dick, but how do we know we can trust adopting this? For user to user payments it's not a big deal to switch to/from this, but for anything else, ...
Also, how will Google handle the customer support needs of payments? People get really pissy when their accounts are frozen, transactions delayed, etc. when money is involved. Google historically doesn't have a good track record for "hand holding customer service".
Why do you think that Gmail is not a core product for Google just because it's not the primary revenue generator? Gmail is a very important user identifier, is probably quite critical for personalized ads, has high usage numbers, and most likely* is revenue positive via ads within Gmail. Quite unlike all the shut down projects, won't you say?
Yeah, you could consider GMail a loss-leader if you'd like. People rely on the email as an essential life service...and -- how nice -- there's some easy-to-use paid features integrated into it.
Just like how gas stations make more money from a cup of coffee than 10 gallons of unleaded.
It probably generates enough revenue to be protected, but it isn't Adwords, search, or Adsense. It is probably less important than android. I'm not sure if it is more or less important than Chrome.
Not core to their actual revenues but it'll help massivly in knowing who are real users. Easy to automatically fake gmail/google plus accounts that look realistic. An account with real payments going to/from it is likely to be real, and can be tied to all their other services. And obviously when paying for things on youtube (which will become more popular soon) it will be as easy for youtube/gmail users, as it is for iOS users to pay for in app purchases.
Can you withdraw money with Wallet in as many countries as with Paypal, though? That has always been the biggest adoption hurdle, I think. If not, what has taken you guys so long to do it? I want Google Wallet to be a real Paypal competitor, but it doesn't seem to be - or at least it hasn't been until now.
Not on this topic, but maybe you know someone. From some countries (e.g. Georgia, Europe), why it is delayed to add support for selling the paid apps in the google play market?
I might have missed this in the keynote. However, what was the original drive to provide such a feature inside of gmail. Also will this work on gmail for mobile devices?
Many years ago, Google made statements like "we only do things that scale, and customer support doesn't scale". It was a strong guiding philosophy for many of the engineers, but that philosophy has eroded.
If we look at some of Google's biggest successes, it has been things that don't scale:
- The Ground Truth team in India, manually drawing the world's maps.
- Manual spam detection in search results
- Customer Support for most adwords accounts
- Customer Support for Nexus devices
I think the executives at Google have enough evidence that "do things that don't scale" can have a big payoff and it is really not that bad. They are clearly no longer too chicken shit to tackle problems that require customer support. The old Google only did things that match the business model of search, today's Google does what it takes to win.
I wouldn't bet against their ability to provide customer support. In the last 2 years, Adwords support went from non-existant to impeccable.
As Google's product offerings evolve, the cost/benefit of providing customer service scales too. Providing personal support to customers who use search isn't scalable because Google makes fractions of a penny per interaction from these customers. Customer support for things like Google Fiber, Google Wallet, and Adwords is a whole different ballgame in terms of the amount of money Google makes on the average user so it is likely that there's enough margin there to actual scale customer support along with the growth of the userbase.
Anything of real value doesn't scale. Just look at Google Maps a lot of companies tried to make their own Map apps and failed. Why? Because google invested a ton of money into doing things that computers can't a present and require manual work this can't be replaced by any other map app without doing the same thing.
There's real value in recognizing what computers can't do and investing into doing it anyway and it can make your app irreplaceable.
They've already started to bite the bullet and provide real customer service with Google Fiber. We could be witnessing a huge change in their institutional attitude toward customer service.
No, those who care about service will switch to google fiber. Then Comcast will see that the number of complaints about their service is decreasing, and go on to praise their employees.
For now companies which should be scared of Google Fiber aren't. It took the US years and lot of tax money to build the infrastructure which current ISPs own. Google has done parts of one city with only 2 more on the way. It will take a long time until their business practices cause them failure against fiber competitors. ISPs aren't interested in improving their networks, only in making money off of the money they've invested into at this point.
How true is this still? Google Checkout was rolled out ages ago (in tech years). The Google today is quite different. I have been reading about "poor Google customer service" for years, almost like it's a running joke of anecdotes. Years ago it may have made sense, but today Google has Android/Fiber/plethora of web services. I can't imagine they haven't clued in on customer service yet with all their paid services.
I get that you think or see these responses as anecdotal, and frankly, there is no other kind when it comes to a customer talking about a company they are getting a product from.
However, I would say that this thread is one of the first places EVER that I have seen someone say google support is good or sufficient or not terrible even. I have seen people have to post on HN to get things resolved by google employees reading HN threads! While it seems like a personal touch, people are resorting to it (and I assume googlers are helping) because there is not another avenue that works for MOST products that google has.
I must acknowledge have not used the google support for fiber (I dont have it) and that might indeed be great, as a man who does customer service stuff plenty of times, I know that there is a simple siloing process going on with their support departments.
Nonetheless google has a loooooong way to go to change the "anecdotal" consensus of the internet when it comes to their support, their comments about not doing things that dont scale entirely aside.
Adsense users often complain about this. They don't seem to realise that they're not the customer. They're not even the product being sold. They are trying to sell product to Google - "Buy this space on my web page / youtube video".
Google has strict rules, and sometimes makes mistakes, and doesn't have any way to sort out those mistakes. It sucks for those people. And since those people are (by definition) the kind of people with websites you do hear about it quite often.
Having said that, you do sometimes hear about people with large numbers of adsense viewers being called (real telephone call!) by Googlers offering advice about better results.
And you hear from people with adword accounts that they get to speak to real people.
I don't know any numbers, but I bet Google has a lot of people wanting to contact them.
I wonder what you would say when you personally experience a $15,000/mo sudden AdSense account shutdown in a bootstrapped startup, with confiscation of $30,0000 earnings already on the account. The email will be just a template to accuse you of "fraudulent activity", and there will be no human at all that you can call. Speaking with the first hand knowledge of the matter.
I think that a lot of folks are in denial about some of Google's downright evil business practices because they admire Google's technology and like Google's attitudes towards open source software. I greatly admire this stuff too, but Google has some shocking business practices that quite frankly are unbelievable until you experience it firsthand for yourself.
When you're a small business and Google bans you for some unknown reason and seizes your money - here is what will happen.
* You might receive some type of form letter in response, but you will not be able to get an intelligent reply from a trained customer service agent.
* You will not be able to reach anybody on the phone for any price that will help you out.
* You will not find out what the issue was that caused a ban.
* Your small business will die a slow death.
* Depending on the amount of money the owners have (most small businesses don't have a lot) they will struggle to even pay their employees their final checks with this cash seized.
* You are forever banned from using AdSense again, so forget starting up another online business ever again.
Google is an amazing company that has some frankly despicable business practices that more people need to pay attention to and call them out for.
I, of course, know nothing about your case. And if I did, I wouldn't be able to discuss it in public, because it'd get me fired. It must be nice taking shots in public where you know no-one can shoot back.
But since I'm completely ignorant of your case, I'm gonna shoot my mouth off a bit, and hope I don't get in trouble for it.
Google spends insane amounts of effort tracking these cases. I've met lots of six-figure-salary folks who hours or days of every week looking into corner cases. And they're just the tip of the iceberg. Again, I'm not speaking to your particular case, but the thing we learn is that out of every hundred people who say what you're saying, at least 99 of them have repeatedly violated the rules, and more than 50 of them got multiple warnings.
And it's not like Google is keeping the money. Google's fraud-fighting effort is not a profit centre, by any stretch.
I'm not saying that Customer Service is Google's forte, but the internet is full of a lot of lies, and lots of them are told by people who tried to scam us, or scam our customers, and are hilariously outraged that we caught them.
I am posting this from Tor, since we are still dependent on Google in many ways. We had a similar situation, where a growing startup that many people here may know about (getting 15000+ signups per day at the time, now more) was getting threats from AdSense that some of our pages violated some vague and amorphous content policies that are actually written to be violated (and 99% of AdSense publishers that do not 100% control their content violate them- think of Myspace.com for example- but they were too big to violate AdSense policies). Our account bringing over $10,000/mo was shut down.
We have documented everything and we are now in a much stronger position, thanks to our users. We have access to Techcrunch/Techdirt, and we have considered publishing a comprehensive documented story of our experience with AdSense, but decided to put it on hold, since we do not want to associate our name with any controversy. When our start-up successfully exits or if it fails, the situation may change.
I just want to add a couple of things to jholman:
You start from the presumption of guilt. An old adage is that your customer is always right, but your starting point is the opposite. This is probably driven by hubris, that's embedded in Google's DNA: you KNOW BEFORE your customer that your customer wants to commit fraud, BEFORE they have actually committed it.
My point is simple: when you threaten to turn off a $5,000+/mo client, provide knowledgeable PHONE SUPPORT. Have your specialist CALL the victim business. These amounts are not a small change to many people, they will lead to bad PR, like was linked in this thread earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803568.
And do not worry, you will not get fired for defending Google!
You could have left the first two paragraphs off and the tone of the post would have been much improved. It sounds like you've got a chip on your shoulder which impacts the positive impact your (unofficial) representation could have.
you do sometimes hear about people with large numbers of adsense viewers being called (real telephone call!) by Googlers offering advice about better results.
I had a fun experience with that call a few years back, when Twiddla was in the spotlight and everybody was calling trying to give us money and free stuff now that we'd proved we didn't need it anymore. I got to explain to the cheerful AdSense Optimization Team guy how I couldn't use his help because we'd had our AdSense account permanently clobbered on a whim a year or so previous and hadn't ever been able to get it reinstated.
As you can imagine, our AdSense account was back up and in good standing the next day. We've never used it since. Fool me once, and all that.
Adsense "users" are actually business partners with google. You share revenue, pool resources, etc. In my mind, that arrangement should encourage a higher level of service than most customers.
I'm saying that the poor service offered Adsense partners isn't excused because they're not customers. If anything, it indicates that customer service will be worse based on this totally made up hierarchy that I've just made up (partners more important than customers, should have higher priority service).
I can't confirm since I closed my checkout account. Try navigating throuh their help pages to see if you can find an email address to contact a human. Used to be impossible. All they had was a selection of multiple choice boxes with predetermined solutions.
I used checkout a year ago and had the same issues. No human, only pre-fab answers based on checkboxes. I haven't used it since.
Recently, I had trouble with gmail on my iPhone (due to the whole EAS shutdown) and was looking for help or info on account upgrades. Only userland help forums for me.
I would say: Google's tech support is terrific until you actually have a problem and need to talk to someone.
The amount they pay for bug bounties has just become worthless. The value of an XSS or even CSRF bug in Google products has just shot through the roof.
I hope it works. If it does it'll have a massive impact on the world and hopefully utterly screw paypal, but the potential for fraud is huge. It's one thing to secure a payment portal, but a complex mail app with a combined payment portal is a massive challenge. I hope they can live up to it.
It depends on how the chargeback and tracing system works. Credit cards and ACH have virtually no security (especially ACH, the "secret" is on the bottom of every check you write), and the world keeps turning. If it's hard to get money out in a untraceable and irreversible way, hacking someones account is not so valuable.
The exact same thing could be said about Google Apps, or PayPal - near-total absence of customer service didn't stop adoption of either of those.
(To be fair, PayPal's customer service is pretty great now, but that's only in the last 18-24 months. They were the market leader long before they put any real effort into that.)
PayPal has plenty of customer service, and has for a long time. The problem has been that they had very shitty and abusive customer service, though I think they've started to learn their lesson on that.
When there's a substantial amount of money involved Google has great customer service. Never had a problem getting issues resolved with my Adwords account.
Given those options I always go for Google Checkout, actually. Paypal doesn't support my country(Lebanon), so that's out of the question. And I try to minimize the number of places that have my CC information. Checkout already has it from my use of the play store on android.
They already have enough relationships with governments around the world for all of their data centers and other projects (maps, mail, youtube, etc.) that I think they could do a decent job on this. I expect it'll still be several years before it's a decent competitor to paypal but it'll be nice to finally get some competition in that space (low overhead global payments without a merchant account).
I suspect that this year Apple will soon release hardware and software that will leverage all those iTunes credentials to provide something similar.
However, Google will be in a great position to profit from a new source of consumer purchase info, which will flow to Adsense/Adwords and their other revenue generators. Privacy be damned? :)
The battle for your complete purchase history is now officially on!
How is this going to be handled, as a money exchange system ("yo, here's for covering lunch for me yesterday"), or like a payment system ("send your payment to shop@gmail.com")?
It seems presented as the former:
> you can securely send money to friends and family in the U.S. - without leaving your Gmail inbox
but people will assuredly try to use it as the latter. When that happens, how will Google address fraud claims?
Edit: Specifically, I mean, how will they investigate fraud claims? Will all transactions be final (easiest), or will they try to refund people who make mistakes (harder)? And what happens when a GMail account gets hacked?
> "When that happens, how will Google address fraud claims?"
Presumably the same way PayPal handles "personal" funds transfers - they don't.
They've specifically flagged this as between friends and family only, which is to say it comes with no warranties. PayPal also has a lower-fee version of their service for the same use case - you get the lower rate in exchange for giving up purchase protection.
This is also why when buying things online anyone who asks you to mark the payment as "PayPal gift" should be given a very stern sober second look.
Google's 2 step authentication is completely useless to some of us because they don't have actual per application passwords. For example if you use an IMAP client to read gmail, then you can get an "application specific" password for it. But Google then allow that password to be used for anything. Essentially you've used 2 step authentication in order to setup 1 step authentication.
Considering Google's accounts aren't segmented by activity (there would be hundreds of activities with many added and removed all the time) that sounds like it would be a nightmare.
Google's app specific passwords are revokable which is the important part. They also can't access sensitive account operations which means you can't reset the master password if you just have an ASP.
If you lose control of your email password you can revoke it and generate a new one. The passwords are long and secure,
But that password gives you restricted access, right? It can't be used, for example, to change your account password or view your search history, etc? At least that's how I understood it?
Obviously there's nothing Google can do about the fact that people want to access their email over things like imap that aren't built with Google 2-factor in mind.
I don't know which APIs get access to the passwords. In my case I would need app specific passwords for IMAP and XMAPP and that constitutes the majority of my interaction with Google.
> Google's 2 step authentication is completely useless to some of us because they don't have actual per application passwords.
App-specific passwords are one-factor in any case (they are "something you know" just like any other password), and are an alternative to two-factor auth for certain places where Google's two-factor auth isn't supported for one reason or another. Google's 2-factor auth requires a device (usually, smartphone app) generated code alongside your regular Google password.
Money Transfer is a legal and regulatory minefield.
Telecommunication services is also a legal and regulatory minefield - one that requires less capital up-front, but just as much (if not more) bureaucratic headaches.
I'm sure they're working on it, and it's either in-progress or not worth it.
(e.g.: in the US, if you are a phone line provider, you get money for incoming calls from other providers when they call you - to the point that something like GoogleVoice could turn a profit just from those fees (unlikely, but possible - many conference call services were run like that).
In most of the world, these termination fees are not enough to provide meaningful income that makes a GoogleVoice profitable (or at the very least, not very expensive) to run.
I'm confused about how this is a "real issue". Businesses operate in certain places. I don't expect the restaurant across the street from my place to cater to the other side of the world. Why is Google required to?
It's not required, it's what Google ultimately would like to achieve, so it's a real issue for them. Being available to only a fraction of the total potential users is a real issue because if they dont manage to expand, competitors will eventually snatch the potential users.
They generally don't. Many Google services have regional restrictions and had them for years. I think they want to do these legally risky stuff within their comfort zone.
I just clicked "Get started" and didn't see anything new in Google Wallet page. But in Settings page, now there's a button to provide personal information (SSN, photo ID scan and etc.) They will probably require those for those who opt-in to use Google Wallet.
Ok, so it's 2.9% fee for credit / debit card payments. And I'm assuming the "connect directly to your bank account" is just using ACH transfers, which take a couple days.
Anyways, a while ago I heard a rumor that they had a team working on adding some, um... alternative, payment methods. Does anyone know where Google Wallet is headed with this?
Edit And here's some clues from the ToS[1]:
> 6. Google Wallet Balance & Peer to Peer Payments
> 6.1 The P2P Service is currently available only to Senders and Recipients who are U.S. residents and who otherwise meet the requirements of these Terms of Service. The P2P Service may not be used for business, commercial or charitable transactions.
> 6.2.a.iii For a Funding Account that is an ACH-enabled checking or savings account, initiate a debit through the ACH Network in the P2P Payment amount.
> 6.6 GPC may charge fees in accordance with the then-current fee schedule, as stated herein. Google Wallet may assess a fee of 2.9%, with a minimum fee of $0.30, per P2P Payment charged to the Sender for P2P Payments processed through the Service. Such fee shall be waived where your Google Wallet Balance is used for the P2P Payment, or an ACH-enabled checking or savings account is the Funding Account for the P2P Payment.
Looks like they've beat out Dwolla here. Ouch.
I'm also really interested in what forbidding "charitable transactions" actually entails. Is it just donations to 501(c)(3)s or is it gifts of other types? How about political donations? And what's its primary purpose? My first thought was that it must be for tax reasons, but then I remembered that people who want to prevent PayPal charge backs often request that payments be marked as "gifts", so it can't be disputed.
> I'm also really interested in what forbidding "charitable transactions" actually entails. Is it just donations to 501(c)(3)s or is it gifts of other types? How about political donations? And what's its primary purpose? My first thought was that it must be for tax reasons
I think its either liability reasons or just market segmentation (so that receivers of the transactions need a merchant account of some kind); note that they don't ever single out "charitable transactions" alone, its always an exclusion of "business, commercial, or charitable transactions" (in several different places in the agreement), so I would assume that the reason for "charitable transactions" is linked to the reason for business and commercial transactions.
It's unclear what happens to your Google Wallet balance if your account is closed:
2.4 Relation to your Google Account
In order to use Google Wallet Services, you must have a Google Account which is in good standing with Google, in accordance with the Google Terms of Service. If you or Google closes your Google Account for any reason, your Google Wallet Account will also be closed and you will no longer be able to access the Google Wallet Services.
That's not clear at all. When you close a bank account, they give you cash. You can't close the account without bringing the balance to $0 (unless it's done by executive fiat / government closed and froze your account with a warrant)
What's not clear is how a person without a google wallet account claims the money. Is it the same tedious process of having to verify a bank account, give a social security number, promise a first born child, etc.
It should be noted that much of this process is federally mandated across a multitude of regulations. Since 9/11, it has been illegal to open bank accounts without a valid SSN, so that the government can track money more easily.
"Know Your Customer" does not mandate what specific pieces of identification a bank has to ask for, only that a bank have "reasonable procedures to verify the identity of any person seeking to open an account". There are many that still don't require an SSN.
I managed to open accounts with Chase while my SSN application was still pending / didn't have the paperwork in hand yet. They chased me up afterwards for it though and have sent me paperwork repeatedly asking for the information (SSN, reason for being in the US etc) in relation to any interest paid on accounts.
Is it possible to hold an account without any sort of tax ID number (ITIN or SSN) Surely one of them is required?
I've had a bank account and associated credit card with HSBC in the US for about 5 years now, and I only got an ITIN about 6 months ago. I managed to get the account because they offer a service for Premier customers where you can link accounts in different countries together, and I already had an account in the UK.
However, over the years it's been a massive PITA to maintain since I'm not a resident, and it's getting progressively more difficult - in fact I just moved all my money out of the US to a USD account in a more friendly jurisdiction (New Zealand, where I currently live) because it was getting to the stage where I could see them possibly freezing my account and it being a pain to sort out. I suspect I wouldn't be able to open the account under the same circumstances now.
It's easy to do it through American subsidiaries of Canadian banks like Harris. Not so easy for US-only banks and, as far as I know, impossible for virtual US banks.
yup, bank of america took a lot of heat for doing that, mainly catering to immigrants that come into the US and want a bank account but don't always have an SSN...
Looking for some citations right now, but I think personal usage of Amazon Payments to send money to individuals is much cheaper. I'm familiar with Amazon Checkout which is what you describe above, but longer ago, I did use Amazon Payments to do a personal transfer and it was free. Citation or retraction coming soon...
edit: Found it - GP may be referring to this - I have not yet looked at Google's new offering enough to see if this is truly comparable for personal payments, however:
Is there a fee for using Amazon WebPay?
No, there is no charge to send money using Amazon WebPay.
I honestly don't know where they state it, but it's free. It's been a known gift among the dealsites circle for a long time now. Here is an example: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1024148/
And I know because I use it every month to pay rent with my credit card. For FREE!
Awesome video. The music got me kind of perked up for the day. It almost made me forget that nobody uses Google Wallet. We've run an ecommerce store with a decent amount of throughput for about 5 years now and I think we had 1 person try and pay with Google Wallet (and she was a Google employee and friend at the time).
I'm probably off on the whole thing here, because the examples in the vid show it as sort of a way to make good with your pals and not so much for ecommerce, but being an old timer, I sort of like to leave my money transfers to people that specialize in it and not as an add-on to my email client.
Uh, given the mega conglomerate Google is making themselves out to be, I think it's safe to say Google knows how to deal with money transferring (at least in the U.S.). You are right though, this service reads and is purposely marketed as a way to exchange money between close circles, and not service your eCommerce store.
Interesting move on Google's part. Clearly the payments space is a getting a lot of investment from both big and small players each with their own take on it.
It is also the first time that it felt like Google was stepping where it might not belong. And its a weird thing since I believe anyone should be able to do anything and let the market decide. For some reason this gave me the same vibe I used to get when a Microsoft would announce they were going to enter some hot new market in order to chill any investment/work in that market. I don't think that is their plan, but perhaps its a happy side effect they get?
I'd much rather see Google create an actual bank and then integrate with that banks services than do it this way.
How quickly can I get money out of google wallet? this url: http://www.google.com/wallet/how-it-works/in-store.html doesn't really render properly in chrome. I guess I can spend the money pretty easily once it is in my wallet.
"Sending money with your Google Wallet Balance is always free and usually instant. You can also send money using your bank account, which may take up to 10 business days to complete. Sending money using your credit or debit card is almost immediate, and usually takes up to a couple of minutes."
You said to ask you any questions, so far you only answered one single question for the last hour. Why would you say ask me anything and don't respond to the questions?
All the questions are pretty much the same - given Google's track record of avoiding human interaction and examples of being arbitrary, why should we trust them this time?
Hmm, if they were devious they could use this to get people to sign up for G+ and by allowing micropayments to G+ accounts (they can be sent from anywhere).
In case there was any ambiguity about whether Google knew the 'real you' from their logging of IPs and search terms, this should remove all of it.
In a way I think we're seeing Google striking against Facebook in what I call the "identity wars" where each service is struggling to be an identity and information service about people.
> In case there was any ambiguity about whether Google knew the 'real you' from their logging of IPs and search terms, this should remove all of it.
How? I mean, obviously, if you use this service (either as a sender or receiver) Google will know more about your real identity as part of conducting the transaction, but how does this say anything about what Google knows "from their logging of IPs and search terms"?
The part I can't figure out is I did "verify my identity" using my legal name, addrs, last4ssn and bday. And it responded back in about 1 second "verified". So how does that work? (Other than perhaps they already have a detailed file on me LOL)
On the phone, I'm told roughly: "I'm going to ask you four questions to verify your identity. The questions are based on publicly available data." [hold]
(He just asked me the last four of my social and the year of my birth. And my address. And is now preparing four questions.
- Where was my SSN issued? Multiple choice.
- Which month was I born? Multiple choice.
- Which name are you associated with (weird list of names? None of the Above.)
- Which county have you lived in? Multiple choice.
I answered them correctly, obviously. Now being redirected to a survey.
> Where was my SSN issued? Multiple choice. - Which month was I born? Multiple choice.
I am fairly certain both of those can be determined with reasonable accuracy from your SSN itself. (the middle two digits of your SSN should roughly correspond with the month of issue (likely the month of birth), and the first three digits should give you the area).
Edit: Nevermind, it only asked for the last four of your SSN I guess.
I'm sure google knows the "real you" if they care to look, but at least in the past, they didn't care to look unless there was a court order. Maybe they care now -
In what way does this announcement make this more or less evident?
PayPal is global, for one, and they have reputable foundation. They have brand recognition too. You and me know about Stripe/Google Wallet/Amazon Payments/Dwolla/etc. but does John Doe from Craigslist/Ebay/"Mom & Pop shop" know about them?
> Google properties such as Google Play, Google Drive, YouTube etc. are not covered under the Google Wallet Purchase Protection. Please reach out to those products directly through their help centers.
Wow. Leverage all those reams of data about us to freeze out fraudsters... Impressive/scary if they pull it off. Hopefully they don't make too many false-positives that result in innocent bystanders being banished from the Kingdom of the Google.
I don't see why this is such a big deal. I've been able to send money via gmail for a long time now! My penis is bigger, I can get drugs from Canada, my hair has grown back, and I've discovered long-lost wealthy relatives in Nigeria!
Given the country-specific regulatory red tape that comes with anything involving money, there's more of an excuse than normal to roll this out country-by-country.
Google Wallet is how old now, three+ years? They didn't even bother adding any other way to pay than credit cards. Someone needs to tell them that there are countries where people simply don't use credit cards. They exist, but at cost, and the culture just isn't there.
If they continue innovating in the payment space at this rate, they will maybe have a solution people here can actually use in 2020.
Uh yes I guess. With a debit card (we just call them bank cards) you withdraw money from the bank account, but from what I've heard a credit card doesn't work entirely the same.
Credit cards are merely debt obligations, and therefore money printing machines. If I have a credit limit of $10k, there isn't actually a $10k account anywhere backing that limit. The bank pays the merchant, yes, but you can follow the trail of that money all the way up to the central bank which created it out of nothing for purpose of fulfilling debt obligations. The money is then destroyed when I pay the bank back at the end of the month.
To the consumer they appear basically the same (“they both have the VISA logo right?”), but in understanding the mechanics of what is happening, they could not be more different.
I doubt a proxy will get you in on this. Google isn't that stupid. Financial transactions are seriously monitored by almost every government. You'll probably have to link to a U.S. bank acct or something.
It is one of the reasons Checkout was introduced in the first place.
However, I doubt this will have an instant effect. I'm not sure about the current status, but at some point sellers I contacted couldn't add Google Checkout as payment option as it was US exclusive.
Google Checkout was before Wallet, to which I was referring in my comment. They later rebranded to Wallet and indeed rebranded, as I've been able to use my account as it was during Checkout. I don't even own an Android phone, but I use Google's payment option to pay virtual goods from time to time. So, I don't see big difference.
Finally. Let's hope they can hook it up with the Play Store and Adsense (so they can add money to that account automatically). I think that will make a dent in PayPal's universe.
I wonder if this is a re-thinking on what they want to do with Google Checkout, as it hasn't really been taking off in the commerce realm since it's initial release.
I use Venmo to send money between friends. It is the ideal way to deal with dinner bills. "Everyone just Venmo me $11". $ is sent immediately to my Venmo balance and I can cash out at any point.
The biggest problem with Venmo was users. Only my close group of friends has Venmo but with co-workers or strangers we have to resort to cash and bill splits.
Pretty much everyone I know has Gmail. Google just made Venmo obsolete.
Does anyone know what fees are incurred for using this service, and if there is a maximum limit on the transaction amount? I had trouble finding this on the Wallet site.
(edit: The FAQ page just says it's free, but doesn't isn't clear about limits)
I hope they improved their phishing/scam detection as well.
If it only takes a few clicks to 'reply with money', and if the scammer only asks for a small amount, this method seems to have a much lower 'barrier' than wire transfers.
Imagine if Google set this up for Bitcoin? Every Google user gets a Bitcoin wallet stored in their profile, and they can use this as a web wallet to send and receive Bitcoins.
I wonder about the morality of this move. They basically replicating venmo exactly. I know it's legal if there isn't a patent, but it sure feels bullyish to me.
Very interesting how they structured the fees. Instead of how PayPal, Square, Stripe and just about everybody else in the World does it, where it is free to send money but merchants must pay a fee to receive it - they are making it always free for merchants and free for users who pay from a bank account or G Wallet balance - and users who want to pay by debit or CC have to pay a fee.
I'm not sure how the market will react to that but it's clearly deliberate and could turn into a great way to drive adoption, as merchants will clearly prefer to use G Wallet with no fees and will push their users toward that whenever possible.
(I realize this is being marketed as P2P but if they intend to take down PayPal et al, it will surely evolve into a way to pay merchants for things).
Seems almost like their wish would be free for everybody, but of course Google has to pay to process your credit card so they can't very well give you that for free.
And if they charged you anything less than 1% for CC transactions, even if it cost them less than that, they'd have people gaming it for the purpose of accumulating CC rewards like cashback and airline miles.
