The History
Of course, while Wallet is Google’s first big push into mobile payments, it is far from the first. Mobile payments have been “the future” of payments for decades now, long before the days of smartphones equipped with NFC (or Near Field Communication
). Early attempts in the 1990s from companies like DigiCash
focused not on phones, but on standalone “smart cards,” which promised better security, no transaction fees and more convenience than traditional credit cards – one day we would use them not to just pay for items at a store, but from our home computers as well. E-cash for an e-economy.
With the rapid rise of cellphones, though, came a push for mobile commerce, or “m-commerce,” an effort that really began to pick up steam in the early 2000s
when mobile payments were not just the realm of upstarts, but big players like Nokia (which would continue to push its own efforts throughout the decade). Our phones would be the one device we used for everything: they’d open doors, get us on a bus or subway, and let us pay for anything, anywhere. In many ways, that’s still the goal we’re working towards, and one that’s slowly starting to become a reality.
read moreGoogle officially rolled out its Google Wallet mobile payment system Monday. Is still in its infancy, but the system already shows a lot of promise.
It uses a technology called NFC (Near Field Communication)
to securely send your payments digitally.
The only phone in the US that supports NFC is the Google Nexus S, available with t-mobile and Sprint, and there are high hopes that the iPhone 5 will support it too.
Right now, Google Wallet only works with Citi-Mastercards and the Google Prepaid Card. Visa and Google announced a worldwide agreement to support the Visa payWave app, but it will still be up to the financial institutions and banks to add support.
read moreAs smartphone vendors and mobile operators shift their strategies to incorporate wireless payment technologies into mobile phones, consumers will soon be able to drop their wallet and carry every piece of important payment information on their handset.
NFC is already starting to be built into a range of Android smartphones, RIM and Nokia have committed to the technology and Apple is reportedly adding the contactless technology to its new iOS devices.
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