Paying with your mobile is all the rage right now and largely thanks to the recent influx of various mobile payment solutions like Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. All of which look to bring an easy way to pay with your smartphone and one which does not require additional hardware or even the need to carry physical cards with you. However, the notion of digital payments is not new and in spite of what seems to be a preference for Android Pay now from Google, the company did already have their Google Wallet service available. A service which interestingly also had the ability to make use of a physical card as well. One which could allow for Google Wallet customers to use their Wallet balance at terminals that do not have NFC support and were therefore unable to be used with the digital version of Google Wallet.
Well, it now looks as though the use of a physical Google Wallet card is coming to an end as a new teardown of the latest Google Wallet app from Android Police reveals that the physical card is seeing its support being removed. According to the details, the removal of support date is set for June 30th, so while this is happening in the next few months, it is not happening imminently. The details further highlight that until June 30th, the general use of cards will not be adversely affected and consumers will be able to continue using their cards to pay for goods. However, following May 1st, activation of new cards or loading further payments to the cards will not be possible. At the moment there are no details as to why the support is being removed and this will likely remain unknown until Google does actually announce the ending of support. Although, it does seem likely that the reason is to do with what has largely been a troublesome relationship with the service, coupled with the general technology evolving past the need for a physical card.
Once again, it is worth mentioning that this has not been announced yet by Google and instead the traits of what looks to be the announcement have been seen in the code of the app – they are not yet appearing in the app, but are just there and ready to be activated when the times comes. So it is always possible that the details or dates could be subject to change before then. Although, at present it does seem likely that June 30th will be the closure date for usage of the Google Wallet physical card. Those who are not running the most up to date version of the app (v14) can download the app through the link below.