Google disables prepaid cards over Google Wallet security fears

Google has temporarily disabled the provisioning of prepaid cards in its Google Wallet service over fears that it can make users' finances easily accessible should they lose their mobile device.

Google Wallet is an application that lets users store payment card details on their mobile devices, then use them for high street transactions.

The decision to suspend prepaid cards was made as a quick fix to a potential problem caused by users failing to use the screen-lock feature, which is standard on most modern mobile devices.

"To address an issue that could have allowed unauthorised use of an existing prepaid card balance if someone recovered a lost phone without a screen lock, tonight we temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards," said Osama Bedier, vice president, Google Wallet and Payments, on one of the firm's blogs.

"We took this step as a precaution until we issue a permanent fix soon," he added.

The security flaw was reported recently by smartphone commentary site The Smartphone Champ.

"This vulnerability is particularly bad as it does not require any software in order to gain access to your Google Wallet. All a person needs to be able to do this is access to your phone, and within 1-2 minutes they will have complete access to your Google Wallet account," it said.