Credit card companies and retailers have sold anonymized purchasing data for years to help companies analyze online ad clicks to offline spend.
Auto companies have used Polk vehicle registration data and data aggregators to match a vehicle purchase to the user's online ad clicks. They compare how showing ads for certain models influences your car purchase (ex. Honda CRV) from your initial search (best family sedan) and demographic info (FB data indicates you are an avid runner, 2 kids, 1 dog, etc..). Retailers employ a similar model for basket size.
There are partners like Oracle Data Cloud, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Neustar and LiveRamp (ex. IdentityLink http://identity.liveramp.com) that provide similar data for O2O measurement.
Google never had great customer service for this product. There were less than five people (customers often called this out since they would submit multiple help tickets and the same people would respond) and they never wanted to devote money to better customer service since the product wasn't maintained. Thus companies didn't want to adopt a below par product with bad customer service compounding the problem.
As a former Google Checkout/Wallet employee, this is completely right. When Checkout was first released, companies would get free AdWords credit to sign up and use the service. Also, non-profits got free processing. After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to move it forward. There were no updates and improvements made. The only changes were when patches and bug fixes for problems that affected a large amount of customers (not surprising since it is impossible to fix every issues that affects every customer, but when you are dealing with a product that some companies solely use to make a living you better try hard to fix as many problems as possible).
> After this initial release and push to have this product adopted, nothing was done to move it forward.
That describes so many Google services. Some live on anyway, because for whatever reasons they meet Google's interests to keep running (Google Books). Some don't.
Saying that Google Checkout is being replaced is extremely misleading to merchants. Almost all Google Checkout merchants process less than a million with Google Checkout, so it is not worth it for them to do their own credit card processing or if they are large enough, there isn't enough of a value prop to use the wallet API.
The Wallet API was announced back in November, but it seems never caught on. I remember that 1800 Flowers and Rockport were offering discounts to customers that used Buy with Wallet, but this doesn't seem very successful by the lack of top merchants that aren't adopting it (even when there is a financial incentive like when Google funded the discounts for Rockport and 1800 flowers). Yes all people that buy Android apps have a Google Wallet account, but they aren't using this account outside of the Android ecosystem.
The customer support for checkout just isn't there as well. It has always been via email and extremely slow. With Paypal if you do over 200k then you get a dedicated account manager and they always have phone support. It has always seemed like a product that they are trying to make solve a problem it isn't equipped to handle- like having Android developers setup a Google Checkout account in order to get paid. It isn't designed for developer needs but it works well enough to get by.
I just graduated from Uni (in Maths). I had a lot of engineering friends, who didn't mind the CS students going into "engineering" jobs. They got really annoyed with a "telephone engineer" installing their telephone line - they were like "No, you're a technician". The difference in their eyes is that engineers are designing and implementing systems, which we ofc do in software development, whereas technicians solve low-level problems in those systems.
At least in university I went, first 2 years was pretty much general engineering, with chemistry and biology etc. included. Even now, most of grantpas and grantmas around, I'm speaking with, if I tell them, that I'm engineer, they trying to ask me to fix their TV/computer/washing machine etc. In most cases, I'm trying...
Google creates a onetime virtual card number that it sends to the merchant and that the merchant can process. The onetime card number never changes for that transaction, so a chargeback and return can always be processed for that order. I'm sure Google plays a part in the chargeback process due to the fact it acquired TxVia in April.
In regards to reward points- This article also mentions "Certain transactions may not earn your typical rewards or be eligible for certain benefits. Learn more about rewards. Please contact the seller with any questions about your order."
Most people seem to use their credit cards to pay for things instead of their debit cards to get reward points. This will definitely discourage people.
I don't think that's accurate as of a week or two ago.
Er, actually, I think that's just for online purchases. Google Wallet in the past has used a Masterpaid prepaid card for NFC transactions and my understanding was that the recent update causes a more direct credit card emulation as it will allow to use any sort of VISA/whatever.
The US has been extremely slow to adopt this technology despite, the adoption rates around the world. Visa and MasterCard have set a date of 2015 to push merchants to have their checkout terminals be EMV compliant or face higher fraud liability charges.
I'm curious because I've heard similar rants about many products that process payments for merchants- Paypal, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, etc.. I'm interested how your provider is able to circumvent all this red-tape that larger companies seem to have.
My merchant provider is with my local bank. If you deal with a bank it suprisingly much nicer than dealing with merchants such as Amazon, Google or PayPal
I agree with you about linking Apple and Chinese. When I think of the Apple labor force I automatically think Foxconn, which leads to thoughts of labour camps and worker suicide, not that that's the whole picture of course.
Auto companies have used Polk vehicle registration data and data aggregators to match a vehicle purchase to the user's online ad clicks. They compare how showing ads for certain models influences your car purchase (ex. Honda CRV) from your initial search (best family sedan) and demographic info (FB data indicates you are an avid runner, 2 kids, 1 dog, etc..). Retailers employ a similar model for basket size.
There are partners like Oracle Data Cloud, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Neustar and LiveRamp (ex. IdentityLink http://identity.liveramp.com) that provide similar data for O2O measurement.