The tech giant envisions its digital wallet assuming a larger role in commerce than merely point-of-sale payments, Google’s payments head said.

For many consumers, the digital wallet is their home for payment cards, and maybe an ID.

Google has a far grander vision of what its wallet should be and do, including a repository for receipts, tracking online orders, arranging refunds and transmitting merchant discounts and other marketing promotions, the technology company’s head of payments said last week in an interview.

Adding new capabilities to Google’s wallet will boost adoption and offer consumers a more “seamless” retail experience, said Stavan Parikh, vice president and general manager of payments at the company.

A more robust digital wallet will mean “that you can truly start leaving your home without your physical wallet,” he said Oct. 26. “So far, most of us can’t do it because there's always one thing that we need to carry.”

That reliance on the physical wallet will begin to change as people find they can use their digital wallet for more than a payment or to store their loyalty cards, he said.

The wallet push gives Google “an opportunity to make commerce journeys more seamless, both across online and offline, because the vast majority of commerce today still happens offline, and the offline journey hasn’t yet been enhanced with digital wallets or technology in some of these ways,” Parikh said.

Over the past few months, Google has redesigned multiple aspects of its Android-based wallet. Among some of the more prominent changes are an expanded form autofill capacity for the Chrome browser with a closer integration to the wallet, announced in June.

Source link