So Long Plastic: Google Wallet Now Uses Any Credit Card

From Tom's Hardware: On Wednesday, Google said that its Google Wallet payment service now supports all credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Naturally there's a catch: Google Wallet is currently available only on selected phones from Sprint and Virgin Mobile, as well as the new Nexus 7 tablet. But that's ok: Google Wallet should be ready for prime-time use when NFC technology becomes a standard feature in every mobile device in the near future.

Previously the only way to use Google Wallet was to add a CitiBank MasterCard, a gift card from AEO, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, or The Container Store, or add a Google Prepaid Card. This is seemingly still the same when adding said cards to the Google Wallet app directly. To use any other card like Discover or American Express, Google has decided to add a "linked" feature that creates a virtual MasterCard to hide the user's credentials from merchants.

"When you add credit or debit cards to the Google Wallet mobile app, you will be issued a virtual MasterCard card by The Bancorp Bank, Google Wallet’s partnering bank," Google states. "This virtual MasterCard is referred to as the 'Google Wallet Virtual Card' in the Terms of Service. When you activate your credit or debit cards in Google Wallet, they are linked to the virtual MasterCard card. When you make an in-store purchase, Google Wallet facilitates payment to the merchant for your in-store purchase using the virtual MasterCard, then charges the amount of the original purchase to your selected debit or credit card."

For these transactions, Google Wallet will present the virtual MasterCard card to the merchant, thus transactions on the user's actual credit card statement will read a "Google *merchant name." If prompted by the cashier, users should state that they're "paying with credit" via MasterCard. The last four digits of the virtual MasterCard account can be found in the card details page of one of the linked cards.

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