Google, a company better known for online search than consumer finance, may soon launch its own kind of the credit card. The company has been hard at work hoping to launch Google Wallet, a phone app that would allow consumers to make payments with their phones rather than their credit cards.
Now reports are surfacing that Google may create its own physical credit card to be used in lieu of the online payments app. The Wallet card, as it may be known, will aggregate all credit cards onto a single credit card. When consumers swipe the Wallet card, the transaction can be added to any one of their credit cards they have on Google Wallet.
The service will also have a built-in safety feature. If the Google Wallet card is lost or stolen, the rumor is that users will only need to replace the Google Wallet card, not all other cards in their Wallet account.
Google's Wallet card as a physical payment tool is meant to give it a way to get inside the wallets of customers who couldn't access the company's mobile app. Google has only been able to tap into Sprint users as AT&T and Verizon have plans to launch their own payment services.
Among other improvements to Google Wallet are a reported method to pay other users of Google Wallet in a way similar to PayPal. The service would allow individuals and businesses the ability to pay one another digitally, likely with a unique ID or email address.
Google has yet to publicly announce the Google Wallet service, but if history is any indication, leaks from Google do tend to come to fruition.