The Saga of the Virtual Wallet 131
theodp writes "Fourteen years ago, Microsoft Wallet promised 'secure, convenient purchasing on the Internet.' That was then, this is now. TechCrunch reports that the first commercial for Google Wallet has been unveiled, and it stars Seinfeld's George Costanza and his overstuffed, exploding wallet. At launch (TBD), Google Wallet will allow you to use a Google Nexus S 4G (from Sprint) to tap-to-pay using Citi MasterCard cards or the Google Prepaid Card. Not to be outdone, PayPal offered a video sneak peek of its upcoming virtual wallet offering, which is promised to be more than 'just shoving a credit card on a phone.' In May, PayPal sued Google over electronic wallet technology, alleging that the search giant hired two of its former execs to obtain trade secrets for a mobile transactions project."
CyberCash (Score:4, Informative)
Fourteen years ago, Microsoft wholesale copied an existing competitor's product to announce Microsoft Wallet. That competitor was CyberCash, which was the first to provide a secure payment system on the Internet. I remember watching a Microsoft promotional video where actually showed pages from CyberCash's web site and presented them as their own, being careful to scroll down enough before the cameras rolled to cut off the CyberCash banners. I learned an important lesson about Microsoft that day.
Re:Ironic, isn't it? (Score:4, Informative)
About as ironic as that Alanis Morrisette song
Re:CyberCash (Score:4, Informative)
Also, IIRC the microsoft wallet WAS the cybercash wallet. I didn't work on the wallet so my memory is fuzzy, but it wasn't a wholesale theft or anything, just a re-branding. We had some kind of a partnership thing going on. Cybercash was making money on the back end merchant banking side of things so having a different wallet or even a different merchant server would have been fine with us.