Following the release of its rebooted, cloud-based Google Wallet app, Google announced it is working with credit and debit card issuers to make it easy to add credit cards to the mobile wallet app. The first partner in the effort to implement Google's "Save to Wallet API for Payment Cards" is Discover.

The news of the collaboration of Discover and Google Wallet was announced on Google's Commerce blog. Google also announced that since its rejiggering of the Google Wallet the company has seen "a significant increase in signups and app usage as people have loaded all their cards into Google Wallet."

The new API for saving a card to Google Wallet is pretty straightforward and requires only a few steps. Discover cardholders need only sign into their Discover Account and visit the Google Wallet page. They then select "Add Your Card" and sign into their Google account when prompted. That's it. The next time the user opens Google Wallet the Discover card will appear as a payment option.

Discover cardholders can then use their cards as normal, continuing to earn any rewards points just like they would if they used the Discover card on its own. Google said Discover has even provided card imagery for use in Google Wallet so users can see which card they're selecting.

Google relaunched its wallet earlier this month, giving users the ability to load any credit or debit card, regardless of brand or issuer, into their Google Wallet account. Purchases are then processed in real time. That was a big change from the original Google Wallet, where users either had to use a Citi-issued credit or prepaid card to fund Google Wallet purchases.

With the Discover agreement, this is the first major card brand to actually agree to the arrangement. If a cardholder wants to load a credit card into Google Wallet, there isn't much the issuer of that card can do to prevent it. But that's a far cry from providing easy integration and branded card imagery for Google to use in its app. American Express actually expressed some reservations that it hadn't agreed for its cards to be loaded into Google Wallet.

Amex's reservations likely stem from the fact that using an American Express through Google Wallet eliminates purchase data that American Express would normally see (and use for marketing). By working with Google, Discover is likely betting it will get more transactions through the partnership and is willing to share that consumer data.

For more stories like this, visit the Carrier/Card Brands research center.