Google Wallet’s founding engineer, Jonathan Wall, and its product lead, Marc Freed-Finnegan, are jumping ship to work on their own payments startup, Tappmo. Still operating in stealth, Freed-Finnegan claims the startup will revolutionise the offline payments space. “We think the next few years will bring groundbreaking developments in mobile commerce and we are excited to dive in with our new venture,” Freed-Finnegan says, after leaving Google at the beginning of March.
This is the latest in a series of stumbling blocks for Google Wallet, which has seen a wave of departures over the last month. The firm is also embroiled in a power struggle with carriers, retailers, banks and PayPal over control of its payment technology. Verizon has even actively blocked the Google Wallet on the handsets it sells.
Meanwhile, Dave Girouard, Google’s VP of apps, is also announcing his departure from the company to form Upstart, a new startup fund. Girouard has worked been at Google for eight years, and has been central to the development of the Google Apps suite. Upstart is backed in part by Google Ventures.
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