Google's decision to hop on to the same bandwagon as Apple when it comes to financial innovation has revealed that the advertising giant is currently working on a payment system that will rival Apple Pay. According to The Information, the company is currently testing out the new service at a number of retailers.
Google Wallet might not have been the successful payment service that Google was hoping it to be so now the company plans on rolling out the next best thing called 'Plaso'. Similar to Apple Pay, Plaso will be designed to allow consumers to perform online cashless transactions in a quick and painless way. Similar to the Square Wallet service, it appears that Plaso will be taking advantage of Bluetooth beacon technology. The technology will involve the customer saying their initials at the point of sale location to a clerk and through the use of speech recognition software, the transaction will be completed.
Apple's payment feature functions through an NFC chip present inside its large screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and by placing the mobile device right next to the NFC terminal, the transaction is able to get completed. Google has currently not commented on how it plans to provide additional layers of security to prevent the bypassing of speech recognition software in order to execute fraudulent purchases.
For consumers, the biggest hurdle in using these online payment services are the security contingencies that come along with them. It can be agreed that by using smartphones to perform transactions, the total amount of risk has been minimized for credit/debit cardholders. This is because sensitive information being used to perform the online transaction never leaves the smartphone, compared to the traditional 'card swiping' method, where information ends up getting stored on the location's server.
Google has not given word on when the service will be officially released.
