Google Shutters its Hands Free Payment System
Google’s advances on the mobile payment front have been well known for some time now, thanks to its Google Wallet system and, by extension on at least some level, Android Pay.
Google also had one other payment method known as Google Hands Free, but that’s a past-tense operation now, as the company recently shut it down.
Google Hands Free was supposed to be, originally, a means to make mobile payments even easier than they are currently, allowing users to essentially voice-activate mobile payments by just saying “I’ll pay with Google” to a phone, which would then make the necessary connections to send payment to the target in question.
It was available for both iOS and Android systems, oddly enough, and by all reports it worked reasonably well.
The problem emerged when Google discovered that Google Hands Free wasn’t really saving any time, or performing all that much better than the array of competitors already in the field, even Android Pay. Worse, it was only working at a comparative handful of locations, most notably the McDonalds and Papa John’s outlets in the South Bay area, making its impact limited to say the least.
Reports suggest that Google doesn’t plan to scrap its Hands Free altogether, but rather take it apart and use some of the technology elsewhere. Whether in a different mobile payment app or in a completely different breed of app altogether is as yet unclear, but the end result remains.
It’s worth noting that not even Google is exempt from the basic laws of competition; its mobile payment app wasn’t delivering value, so now it’s out of the field. It’s easy to say here that Google was just solving the wrong problem; speed and convenience and ease of use have never been problems most mobile payment systems have had.
Google might have been better served here trying to address issues of security, or of ultimate value with better rewards programs.
Still, Google has derived a valuable lesson from its efforts here, and gave us all one in the process. Value in mobile payments isn’t connected to speed or to convenience; those things are already available in abundance. Value comes from the total impact, and Google Hands Free just wasn’t delivering.