LONDON: Diverse, prolific and versatile, technology giant Google is plunging into another uncharted territory and according to an earlier report the company will lock horn with Apple Pay in the payment service niche.
The company’s efforts to augment its Google Wallet is now a work progress and it is groomed to challenge Apple Pay after getting humbled by its rival company in the past.Google has learned its lessons and it is now more determined to turn the tide on its favor. Google has made a tie up with Square and has been testing its new mobile payment service.
Codenamed its mundane effort as Plaso, this platform will enable people with mobile devices that run the Android mobile operating system the capability pay online purchases fast and hassle-free.
Google employees have been beta testing Plaso since last fall while dining at nearby renowned restaurants and diners such as Papa John’s and Panera Bread. The testing of Plaso let users access their accounts and make checkout by simply giving their initials to the retailers’ cashiers. The cashiers will then view the Plaso interface using the retailers’ smartphone and opts for the customers’ initials from the list of Plaso-enabled devices that are within the Bluetooth range.
The Plaso processes and transactions are still vague and the report had made a forecast that Google will probably wound up losing money with this new service. It is also not clear whether Plaso will be a standalone app or will be incorporated with Google Wallet.
Google’s Plaso is almost similar to the Square’s botched Wallet. The Square’s service let the users to just state their names at checkout to pay for the goods they have purchased, but unfortunately the service lost steam and fizzled out last year. Google seemed to be borrowing concepts from Square and it is bullish on developing a mobile payment system for its Android-based mobile handsets to compete toe-and-nail with Apple Pay payment service which is built for iOS-enabled devices.
