Google Wallet Updated To Support All Major Credit And Debit Cards and Goes Cloud Based

Google Wallet just updated and announced that the service now supports major services like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. We sort of suspected something like this would happen, and Google has managed to do this by making Wallet cloud-based, as opposed to an embedded processing system. This means Wallet requires an active internet connection in order to select a card - though not for the actual payment. Your card should stick in the system, and as long as it's selected, payment should work offline. You can only have one card selected at a time, though.Thanks to our Sources : AndroidPolice

We'd heard talk of a "hybrid" cloud / NFC system before, and it appears this is what Google had in mind. Google is using the Google Wallet MasterCard as a physical NFC intermediary of sorts with your regular credit cards.

We've come up with a basic explanation of how we're thinking this all works offline.

Wallet receives a request for a payment via NFC. Wallet then sends the card credentials to the payment terminal.
The payment terminal sends those credentials to the MasterCard's bank (Bancorp) for payment authorization.
Bancorp forwards this to Google, and Google then attempts to authorize your selected Wallet payment card.
If it's successful, Google tells Bancorp to authorize the transaction.
If the transaction goes through, Google then charges your selected Wallet card - all done, no device-side net connection needed.

We also have the APK here, if you want to mess around with it. Right now only some devices are supported, here they are so far: