Google Wallet has been having some issues today, particularly when trying to transfer or send money to other Wallet users, or simply to other people at all, according to Android Central. While we aren’t particularly sure why this is happening, but it doesn’t even look like Google is aware of the problem. Google’s own website monitors the status of all of its apps, including Wallet, Gmail, Hangouts and a whole litany of other services. All of them are showing green (meaning that there is not a service interruption), so we’re led to believe that this is either an issue that is affecting certain people, or perhaps certain devices, without Google’s knowledge.
This comes somewhat recently after Google released physical debit cards for Google Wallet with Master Card, a move that potentially was taken to increase the proliferation of Wallet in the market place. The necessity of a physical card was something Google probably realized when NFC based transaction solutions were not being readily adopted in the market place, including major cities like New York and Los Angeles – with the iPhone not even having NFC, most companies, outlets and stores probably do not see the value of investing in such advanced technology.
Nonetheless, Google Wallet has yet to see the breakthrough it needs in this country (and others) to succeed, and Google needs to establish trust in their brand and trust in the company’s security policy now that customers are entrusting them with access to some of their most important personal information. I have high hopes for Wallet, as does Google, but we’ll have to see. These sorts of random failures and setbacks undoubtedly work against their efforts, and hopefully we’ll see them occurring less and less over the coming months.
Are you having the same issues? Is your Wallet working fine? Let us know!