Google said on Monday that it has struck a deal with mobile phone payment firm Softcard that will help help it to bring Google wallet app pre-installed with smartphones sold by three of the major US carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The carriers will begin shipping the Google Wallet app later this year on mobiles running Android 4.0 “KitKat” or higher, according to a Monday blog post by Google’s Ariel Bardin. Teaming up with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon seems to be a major decision as well as a breakthrough for Google, because the tech giant was left with “Sprint” as the only major carrier who ran the pre-installed Google Wallet on the smartphones sold by them. While all other major service providers keeping the Google’s wallet in their blocklist making it was hard for Google Wallet to compete with Apple inc’s Apple Pay. There were reports of Google planning to buy the mobile payment company Softcard however the latest news indicates that Google will only be partnering with Softcard. Softcard will help Google by providing some major mobile payment technology and patents. Softcard in a blog post said that, “For now, Softcard customers can continue to tap and pay with the app,” the company will be sharing more information with the customers and partners in the coming week. Seems like Silicon Valley’s two richest and most popular companies Apple inc and Google inc are going give each other a tough competition on the mobile payment solutions arena. On the other hand, South Korean tech giant, Samsung Electronics has also indicated it would buy a mobile payment start-up called LoopPay, thus making it the third major player in mobile payments solutions. Samsung has not yet said anything over its plan to include a digital wallet in its next Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone.
