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Google is Killing the Wallet Card

The Google Inc. Mobile Wallet card for cardless payment sits on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012. - Chris Ratcliffe—Bloomberg/Getty Images
The Google Inc. Mobile Wallet card for cardless payment sits on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012. Chris Ratcliffe—Bloomberg/Getty Images

After over two years of the Wallet card, Google is shuttering the physical arm of its Google Wallet product, a payment service that allows users to pay each other.

In a very short blog post, Google announced that it wanted to focus on its peer to peer payment app instead. Google still has a pay-at-the-register option called Android Pay, but this eschews the card altogether—a user simply places their phone next to a terminal at the register instead of swiping.

Google pointed its erstwhile card users to American Express and Simple debit card accounts as an alternative.

The card will officially be retired at the end of June, and any transactions after that will not be completed—including recurring transactions—although pending ones will still go through. None of this will affect your Google Wallet balance, however.

The reason behind this is likely a cost cutting measure, as Google lost money in credit card fees with every transaction, according to a 2013 study.

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