Google Might Share Revenue with Mobile Service Providers Offering Google Wallet

"Slow" is a word many would use to describe progress being made by Isis and Google Wallet as other contestants including PayPal seem to be getting traction by taking less complicated routes to market.

There now is speculation Google might be considering sharing revenue with carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T if they support Google Wallet on their devices, Bloomberg reports.

That Google would be considering ways to accelerate progress is not surprising. Neither Google Wallet nor Isis have moved as fast as many had hoped would be possible.

There might be incentives for the carriers, though. In addition to the revenue sharing, Google also could shift gears in another direction and build a system that relies on upgraded retail point of sale terminals without using any features of the phone, a move that would cut the mobile service providers out of a role in the payment process.

The approach would avoid using the phones--or related servers-- to authenticate purchases and accounts, instead using only a new network of servers. In part, such a move would conceivably allow Google Wallet to accelerate adoption by taking the phone out of the picture as a "gating" factor, much as PayPal has been doing.

Though it is counter-intuitive that taking the "mobile" out of mobile payments would make sense, getting wider adoption, faster, is important in a new market. Whether end users or retailers care very much about "how" the new payment features work is open to question.

If Google Wallet gets wider adoption, with or without direct use of the phone, it has more opportunities to add phone-based approaches incrementally.