| They're canceling it _because_ it was successful. The issue is that by using virtual Master Cards they have to pay part of the interchange fee to Citi (or was it Bancorp?). Not only that, but if you were backing it by a credit card, then they ate the 2% fee that they get charged in the backend when hitting your real credit card. Plus the fact that they were essentially issuing you and everyone else short term credit when you made a purchase and that every transaction was Card Not Present no matter what (even if you swiped the "real" google wallet card, which was fun to do)
... yeah. It was never going to stick around unless you got charged for usage, at which point it's not so attractive. The pressure in the industry is to move to the secure-element/token based system anyway, i.e. Samsung/Android/Apple pay. If you want to do funky stuff in the backend to abstract your purchases into one place then Simple or something like that is for you. What I'm worried about is what's going to happen with the send-money feature of Google Wallet, which was attractive for short-term keeping track of who owes who what without Paypal fees. I'm hoping they bring that back and somehow link it into Android Pay, even if there's some kind of fee coming or going for when you actually "collect". (Keeping it otherwise liquid and fee-free when you're just moving numbers around between accounts inside the system). crosses fingers |
Money will be taken directly from the sender's debit card or checking account, and the recipient can deposit it in their checking account. The only features going away are the physical Wallet card and the ability to add to your Wallet balance.
According to /u/GraemeStanding, who appears to work on Android Pay (which is basically the old NFC payment portion of Google Wallet, split off and rebranded): https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4crogp/just_got_an...