Von Behren disclosed the move today in his LinkedIn profile, ending greater than eight years with Google. He and Wall, who had done anything about the NFC-based Google Wallet starting in 2009, left the project together in January. They had remained together with the company for a couple of to 3 months.Inside an e-mail statement for a a question from NFC Times, von Behren said he had not planned to leave Google.“When I left the Google Wallet project in January, I fully expected to stop working in payments however to remain at Google,” he was quoted saying. “After meeting the team at Square, however, I chose to perform the opposite. Square is practicing wonderful things in the payment space. They include a strong leadership team along with a culture that fosters innovation.”Von Behren declined to reveal his new position at Square, except to express he will help the startup expand its existing products.Signaling a Move into NFC?
It remains to appear whether Von Behren’s hiring is definitely a move by the San Francisco-based startup to aid NFC. Square has downplayed the value of NFC previously.Square, which competes with the Google Wallet, had greater than 2million mainly small merchants signed up in the United States by the end of 2011, most with a swipe dongle on Apple and Android smartphones and on the iPad tablet. NFC is not really involved in the transactions.A relatively small percentage of a typical merchants, about 75,000, are onboard so far for Square’s newly renamed consumer app, “Pay with Square,” which lets users pay without swiping a card. The app, introduced last May as “Card Case,” uses geolocation to identify users. Purchases get included in the consumer’s tab and charged to a preregistered payment account. Users might verbally tell the merchant to charge their account.U.S.-based mobile-commerce analyst and consultant Cherian Abraham believes the hiring of von Behren signals a move by Square that also support NFC.“Else, it is certainly like hiring Michael Jordan to get suggestions about golf,” Abraham told NFC Times. “The fact that there would soon be loads of phones touting NFC is not lost on Square. They obviously observe the advantage of use cases using NFC that can simplify merchant-customer interaction.”But he believes Square would in all probability use von Behren’s expertise to design a peer-to-peer payments process using NFC technology, avoiding the necessity of merchants to deploy contactless point-of-sale terminals. “Square will not have confidence on how NFC employed today, in card-emulation mode, further reinforcing reliance on existing payment rails,” he was quoted saying.All told, Square is reportedly recording $4 billion worth of mobile transactions per year.Internal Disagreements
Google Wallet, which launched last September, also faces competition in the budding mobile-payments market from PayPal as well as the U.S. carrier-led Isis three way partnership, the latter wishing to launch its NFC wallet this summer.As NFC Times reported last month, the Google Wallet program has been marked by internal disagreements between wallet chief Osama Bedier plus some wallet staffers. Several have left the program, either owing to philosophical differences with Bedier and Google’s method of the wallet or because of a reorganization for a what appears being a struggling initiative.Von Behren’s departure from Google follows that of two other key former Google Wallet staffers, co-founding engineer Wall and product lead Marc Freed-Finnegan. They left March 5 to start their own mobile-commerce venture, Tappmo, and that is still in the development phase.Like Google Wallet, Tappmo will focus on offline mobile commerce and shopping, including payment. But the founders of the venture aren’t revealing many details.Apart from the co-founding engineers and Freed-Finnegan, Andrew Zaeske, former director of engineering for the wallet, can also have left the project in January. Some project managers also left and Vikas Gupta, who been a head of consumer payments or commerce after Google acquired his company, Social Gold, in 2010, has also left the firm. Bedier can also have grabbed over with additional hold of the wallet from Stephanie Tilenius, vice president of commerce.UPDATE: A Google spokesman, when requested comment by NFC Times on von Behren's exit coming from the company and also the other wallet staff departures, would only claim that “Rob made great contributions to Google; we wish him all of the very best in his future endeavors.” END UPDATE.Sources have told NFC Times which the Google Wallet team was split over strategy for the NFC wallet, which appears to be struggling to sign up new partners, including banks, operators, merchants and handset vendors. Google also hasn’t released transaction figures, but they can also be believed to be low.Among the chief issues creating the rift feels like how open the wallet would be to app developers and good providers. That, along with a few other differences on strategy, put some long-standing participants in the Google Wallet team, who had argued for more openness, at odds with vice chairman of payments and wallet head Bedier.Bedier joined Google from PayPal in February of 2011 and took substantive control over a program that had already been in development for a couple of years. Lots of his decisions apparently didn't sit well with resident wallet team members. Bedier, during the presentation on a session of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, made no mention of problems inside the wallet program. He was quoted saying Google’s operator partner Sprint will introduce above 10 additional NFC phones supporting the wallet this year, and said the firm was having “conversations” with other mobile operators, coupled with handset makers and merchants, while it seeks to expand the reach of a typical wallet. He offered few specifics, however.UPDATE: Bedier late Monday local time announced in a blog post that Google had purchased New York-based TxVia, that provides a payments platform for processing between of prepaid cards, including general purpose and gift cards, along with payroll and government disbursement cards. It is really not clear in the event the acquisition uses a pertaining to the NFC part of the Google Wallet. Bedier didn't reveal many details. But he did say the firm, which Google has been working with over the past year, has connections with the main payment networks and could complement Google's payments capabilities and accelerate innovation toward the “full Google Wallet vision.”
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