Google has acquired TxVia, a payments technology company. It made the acquisition to complement its payments capabilities and accelerate innovation with this product, the company says in a blog post.
Certainly Google Wallet needs a boost, AllThingsD writes: thus far Google has failed to secure a wireless partner, which means that Wallet only works of a handful of Android smartphones supported by Sprint.
Growing Competition
Google must play catch up in this space as other mobile payment models gain traction. PayPal Here and Square, for example, are fighting for market share with their respective devices.
There is also the ISIS Wallet, which is also gaining momentum.
The TxVia acquisition comes amid reports that Google is considering a change to Google Wallet. It has lost two key executives and adoption of the product has been slow.
The Coupon Model
One strategy it is considering is a greater emphasis on coupons, Bloomberg reports, as illustrated by the announcement with Pinkberry offering 10% off its frozen yogurt purchases until April 30.
There is a certain logic to that. Digital coupon users shop more frequently and spend more heavily than the average shopper, says Coupons.com in April 2012 results from research conducted by GfK Knowledge Networks.
The study looked at more than 150 coupon campaigns representing a cross-section of CPG categories, and compared the shopping behavior of more than 200,000 households that redeemed a coupon sourced from Coupons.com or its network with the behavior of 2.3 million households in the GfK Knowledge Networks database.
Digital coupon users were found to spend 23% more per grocery shopping trip than the average shopper ($55.05 vs. $44.87) and almost 50% more annually ($3,803 vs. $2,545).
