When mobile payments hit the scene with Google Wallet it was an awesome and convenient new technology that was almost depressing to see not catch on so quickly. Fast forward a few years and Apple is presently pushing their own mobile payment system which was just announced last year, called Apple Pay. Despite having their own mobile payment platform with Google Wallet out before Apple and the carrier branded mobile payment system now known as SoftCard, Google has been having a hard time getting banks and retailers to adopt the system. This hasn’t been the case with Apple Pay, but then again no one can deny the type of power Apple holds in their brand recognition and presence. Many businesses already use iPads and iPhones for their point of sale systems, so it’s understandable to see many retailers immediately interested in the idea of Apple Pay.
According to Business Insider, Google might be exploring ways to better compete with Apple on the mobile payment front. This information comes from analysts at Piper Jaffray who are predicting that Google will lay out its plans and details for how they’ll be revising and making changes to Google Wallet at the upcoming Google I/O conference to be held in June. If Google is going to be making any major changes or any changes at all to the Google Wallet platform, this would seem like the place to do it as they generally announce big changes to their services at this conference.
Analysts at Piper Jaffray referred to the predicted changes as a “meaningful upgrade” and while there is no way of telling what Google will be doing in terms of changes, they’ll certainly have to do something if they want to be able to compete. For comparison, Business Insider reports that Apple Pay saw just about the same amount of user adoptions(around 1 million)in just a few days after launch that took Google Wallet over a year to reach. While more people are certainly aware of mobile payments at this point in time which could have something to do with the number of interested Apple pay users, it also seems to show that more people are perhaps willing to adopt a mobile payment platform from Apple. Many are speculating that Apple Pay will help to bring some revitalization to the mobile payment adoption within businesses, and judging by the popularity of adoption and the sheer amount of credit card activation’s on the platform it doesn’t seem too far off. The questions is does Google have something in mind to bring this rate of adoption to its own platform, and if so, will it be meaningful enough for users to jump on board and convince the banks to support it.