Google Wallet's Co-Founding Engineer Jumps Ship for Square

By PCMag Staff

April 3, 2012

One of the co-founding engineers behind Google Wallet, Rob von Behren, has left Google to join payment provider Square.

As originally reported by NFC Times, von Behren disclosed the change via his LinkedIn profile, where he indicated that he will now serve as "HyperSpatial Payments Pioneer" at Square. Von Behren did not disclose exactly what this position entailed.

Google Wallet launched last year, offering just a single carrier (Sprint), a single bank (Citi) and, at the time, a single phone. Competitors, which included PayPal and a collection of wireless carriers banding together under the name ISIS, dismissed Google Wallet as lacking the necessary ecosystem clout to make the technology a success. Verizon, for its part, blocked Google Wallet from being used on its platform. Subsequent security flaws on rooted Android devices also began undermining trust on the platform.

Now, according to NFC Times, von Behren apparently felt that he could accomplish more at Square, which pioneered mobile payments with an easy-to-use credit-card reader than could be plugged into an iPhone. ""When I left the Google Wallet project in January, I fully expected to stop working in payments but to remain at Google," he told NFC Times. "After meeting the team at Square, however, I decided to do the opposite. Square is doing some great things in the payment space. They have a strong leadership team and a culture that fosters innovation."

Paypal and EventBrite, among others, have also developed credit-card readers. Meanwhile, NFC Times speculated that von Behren could take his knowledge of near-field communications (NFC) technology to Square, which so far has pooh-poohed the use of the technology. Sprint, however, has indicated that most, if not all, of its smartphones going forward will receive NFC technology built in.

Two other key Google Wallet engineers, Jonathan Wall and product lead Marc Freed-Finnegan, previously left Google to form a stealthy mobile payments startup, Tappmo.