Google to Announce Apple Pay Competitor in May?

According to the latest report from the Wall Street Journal, Google is currently planning to revamp its Google Wallet service in order to compete with the recently-released NFC-based payments system called Apple Pay. The new Wallet will be officially announced this May, at the annual Google I/O developer conference, reporters claim. While this rumor hasn’t yet been confirmed, such a step is quite possible as the only way to compete with Apple’s payments service is to make Google’s own service better.

Part of Google’s plan, according to the report, is to acquire the carrier-owned Softcard (formerly called Isis) for its mobile payment system. Google wants to wrangle together carriers, banks, and others to have Google Wallet found on every Android device. To make it worth it for each party, Google is reportedly willing to throw money at them to have Google Wallet on all devices.

Although Google Wallet was introduced in 2011, its share on the market is equal to 4%. Just for you to compare: Apple Pay was launched last year and only in the USA and its share on the market is now equal to about 2%. Google has a lot of work to do not to lose its customers and money.

[via iDownloadBlog]