Google announced last night that it has acquired TxVia, a payments technology company, which will become part of Google Wallet.

“Since 2008, TxVia has supported the management of more than 100 million accounts,” says Osama Bedier, Vice President of Wallet and Payments at Google. “They’ve partnered with the industry’s best known brands, and their leadership team has played an instrumental role in defining the fast-growing prepaid card segment of emerging payments. In this time, TxVia has also certified and directly connected to the major payment networks, which establishes a solid foundation for Google Wallet and our partners to drive innovation on a global scale and in a partner friendly way.”

“Finding and purchasing products is a big part of day-to-day life,” adds Bedier “At Google, we’re working to create new ways to improve the commerce experience. We’ve worked closely with TxVia over the last year, and they’re a forward-thinking team that will help us take the next steps in realizing the future of commerce. We welcome the TxVia team to Google.”

A message on the TxVia site says:

For more than 5 years, TxVia has been delivering groundbreaking processing solutions to enable new and increasingly complex forms of payment. We’re delighted to announce that as of April 2, 2012, we are continuing that mission at Google.

Success in payments requires not only innovative technology and operational excellence but also broad collaboration. As part of Google, we look forward to expanding our partnerships with both the payments industry and a wide variety of other organizations that are pioneering a new era of commerce.

In related news, one of the original engineers behind Google Wallet just quit Google to go to Square, which has its own digital payments offering in Pay With Square. It’s going to be interesting to watch these two companies, along with PayPal and others compete in this space going forward.