After Google unveiled its Google Wallet in New York yesterday, PayPal filed a lawsuit in a California court alleging intellectual theft and betrayal, reports the AP.
The central figure in the 28-page complaint is Osama Bedier, now Google’s vice president of payments after spending nine years at PayPal. He was part of the team that showed off a new service called Google Wallet (FAQ).
The suit alleges Google hired Bedier four months ago primarily to pick his brain and steal PayPal’s trade secrets for its new phone-as-a-wallet service (pdf).
PayPal alleges Bedier put the latest information about PayPal’s mobile payment strategy on his own computer just before he started his new job at Google. The suit also names a former eBay executive, Stephanie Tilenius, who went to work for Google in 2009 and began to woo Bedier last year. Tilenius, Google’s vice president of commerce, also appeared at the New York event to tout the benefits of Google Wallet.
“Sometimes the behaviors of people and competitors make legal action the only meaningful way for a company to protect one of its most valuable assets — its trade secrets,” PayPal wrote on its blog Thursday.
A joint venture between three of the four largest wireless cell phone carriers will soon bring a mobile payment program to Utah’s public transportation system.
It was the first mobile fare payment announced in the United States.
Isis, a mobile commerce joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, announced last month it will roll out the pilot program in Salt Lake City in 2012, offering an alternative to credit and debit cards for Utah Transit Authority fare payments.
Isis chose Salt Lake City because its transit system, run by the Utah Transportation Authority (UTA), is already equipped with near-field communication (NFC)— the key to their mobile-payment system. A second pilot city is also planned, which likely will be Austin, Texas, says NFC Times.
The program is also set to work for point-of-sale purchases at retailers in the area.
Isis plans to launch commercial services in 2012, in conjunction with Discover and Baclays bank.
Sprint launched a different NFC system yesterday with Google, Citi and Mastercard. But Google has not been able to nail a payment processing system, observes TechCrunch. They have Google Checkout, but customers clearly prefer competitors like PayPal, which has about 90 million active credit card accounts.
eBay’s iPhone app has been downloaded 12 million times, and smartphone sales by eBay sellers will top $1.5 billion in 2010. Apple has over 100 million accounts set up with built-in credit card access. The main goal for Apple may be to get a piece of the $6.2 trillion Americans spend each year with credit cards.
