Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

(If this sounds annoyingly familiar, it’s a lot like one of the ways we outlined in June for Apple to use its cache of 400 million customer payment-card numbers to make mobile payments “just work” on the iPhone.)

For retailers, that means no further POS hardware or software changes are required for the revamp, either for the 25 chains that have already modified their POS to handle Google Wallet deals and coupons or for any other retailers that only accept contactless cards.

Google can’t currently collect line-item detail, but that’s coming, said Robin Dua, head of product management for Google Wallet. Google will also apparently be the merchant of record for transactions. As for security and PCI, the new Google Wallet will use all the same EMV security and meet all the same PCI requirements as before.

“Many retailers have really dabbled in this whole contactless area,” Dua said. “Retailers have not had a major incentive to address those customer issues and to invest in signage and that sort of thing. The dynamics are now going to shift dynamically.”

In other words, Dua is admitting that most haven’t promoted either Google Wallet or generic contactless payments with in-store signage or customer encouragement by associates or with any meaningful employee training. “They have that incentive now.”

Well, maybe. There are far more contactless cards out there than Google-Wallet-enabled devices, and that fact hasn’t moved either retailers or customers to use them.

The other obvious benefit to Google is that it can now add customers’ payment-card numbers at will on its servers. It turns out that the plan of getting thousands of banks to go through a months-long process to become capable of installing a customer’s payment card inside an NFC Secure Element wasn’t working for Google or the banks.

The process of provisioning cards over the air to the mobile device’s secure element took “six months to one year,” Dua said, adding that, given the huge number of players involved, “This would literally take a lifetime.”

Dua also offered a small dig at ISIS, pointing out that Google is not charging issuers to get their cards in the Wallet, something that ISIS is doing, he said.

Whether the big expansion in issuing banks and card brands will actually jumpstart Google Wallet usage among customers remains to be seen. Wallet mobile payments are still supported by only a handful of phones and Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet. Dua insists that Google is still committed to phones for its primary platform. But if lots of customers start showing up waving tablets at POS devices, we can be pretty sure Google misjudged its market.