Google's Gbuy nears launch

Google’s online payment system, Gbuy, is expected to launch June 28, further pitting the Internet giant against industry titan and rival eBay, according to a research note released Friday by a Wall Street analyst.

Gbuy is expected to be free during the initial phase, but merchants may eventually be charged a 1.5 percent to 2 percent per-transaction fee, Jordan Rohan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, said in his research note. A fee of that size would be slightly less than that charged by eBay’s online payment system, PayPal.

Google was not immediately available to comment.

“The brilliance of Google’s Gbuy merchant-to-consumer payment platform lies in what Google may do with the transactional data it captures from the thousands of merchants that may ultimately offer Gbuy,” Rohan said.

Google is able to gather the data when users click on a merchant’s Gbuy feature. Consumers are then transferred to Google’s Gbuy site, where they complete the transaction.

Google’s payment system, as a result, holds the potential to monitor which paid-search results users click on and of that group, which ones turn into actual sales. With that information, Google may find itself in the enviable position of being able to identify which categories bring in the highest return on investment for advertisers, Rohan stated.

Full article: ZDNet News