> [The beautiful, gorgeous product] would solve every monetary exchange hurdle with masterful, dashing perfection.

I wish the author actually described his/her conception of this panacea. It's possible that "paypal's decade-long fumbling" reflects the reality that the perfect product does not exist.

Please. Google Wallet is going to disappear into the night like every other Google experiment.

And now with the second comment we already have the usual choir about Google phase-outs. Thanks for rejoining.

Very unlikely. Google Wallet is heavily integrated into Android and Google Play. It's not going away.

Before Google Wallet was "heavily integrated into Android and Google Play" there was a service called Google Checkout that was "heavily integrated into Android and Google Play". This service was replaced by Wallet, the parts highly-specific to Android were migrated, the rest of it was mostly scrapped, and what little remained was reborn as unrecognizable Google Wallet services (such as Wallet Objects). This all happened this year, and anything using Checkout that wasn't Android was given six months notice to migrate, in most cases to third-party recommended services (such as Braintree, which was since purchased by PayPal). Again: Checkout was "heavily integrated into Android and Google Play" in that they purchase process for apps used it; developers even had to have Checkout accounts to sell apps, as the sales were directly reported through that interface and accounting backend. Why, then, are you so certain that the same thing wouldn't happen to Wallet?

It'll get phased out. They'll find a way.

Nothing lasts forever

yep. just like gmail.