Google has announced a Google Wallet Debit Card, to be funded from your Google Wallet account. You can top it up from a bank account or another credit card account.

This is one of many links describing it.

http://www.techhive.com/article/2065471/google-makes-end-run-around-isis-with-new-google-wallet-debit-card.html

I have signed up for the card and it will arrive in about 10-14 days they say.

But it got me thinking. This is purely from a tech point of view but when Google Wallet first came out on a phone, it was funded from your GW balance. And for early adopters they threw in a $10 credit.  I signed up by sideloading the app and with a rooted phone, using Market Enabler to set my phone to be T-Mobile.

I successfully used the app a couple of times to buy a meal at Leuven's in Wellington and at a sushi bar.

They then stopped the debit card process and instead, allowed you to use any credit card. But since then I have never been able to do a transaction, using either the Mastercard or Visa NFC terminals with either my local Visa PayWave card or my US credit card. The error I usually get is, international transactions not supported.

But since this new GW Debit card actually relies on a balance in your GW, it might not necessarily traverse the entire MC network but just enough to get the transaction to Google to approve.

If it works it's really an academic exercise and worth some geek value in a store but from a practicality point of view, it's not that useful. This is because you have to fund the Wallet from a presumably NZ credit card and so incur one exchange rate and then when you actually purchase something in NZ, there will be another exchange rate conversion.  Of course it might not work so it's really academic.

I am going to try. Wonder if anybody else is going to?