Google's long-rumored mobile payment system is expected
to come to fruition May 26, with company officials demonstrating a service that
lets users purchase goods, cash in coupons and do other tasks with their
smartphones.
The mobile payment platform, which will be demonstrated May 26
in Google's New York office, will leverage the NFC (near field communications) technology
on Samsung Nexus S 4G handsets offered by Sprint, according to Bloomberg and other reports.
The service will debut in five U.S. markets: New York,
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., Bloomberg said.
Reuters
said participating retailers include Macy's and American Eagle
Outfitters and the Subway sandwich franchise.
These retailers will use upgrade cash registers from VeriFone
Systems capable of reading and responding to NFC.
The service will use a Citibank-issued MasterCard credit card number
and a virtual Google MasterCard prepaid card, according to The New York Times. Consumers will be able to make NFC payments at any of the 124,000 merchants that employ MasterCard’s PayPass terminals.
NFC is a wireless protocol that enables communications
between sensors brought within close proximity. The technology is widely
adopted in Japan, where consumers simply wave their mobile phone in front of an
NFC reader at check-out counters.
NFC has yet to catch on in the United States, with retailers slow
to adopt the required readers and other infrastructure. Google and its partners
aim to change that.
Google expects that over time software developers will
write mobile applications that take advantage of NFC. Google would then pair
ads, as well as
local deals and discounts, with these services.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt last November waved around a smartphone he said was fitted with NFC technology.
Google in December revealed the device as the new Samsung Nexus S, running the company's latest Android 2.3
"Gingerbread" operating system. Gingerbread includes native support
for NFC, which requires a special controller chip to operate.
The Nexus S 4G smartphone, launched by Sprint earlier
this month, also carries such a chip.
Google in March was widely reported to be working with credit card providers MasterCard and
Citigroup to let consumers make purchases by waving their smartphones at VeriFone
terminals in selected retail stores in New York and San Francisco.
May 26's event in the city marks the expansion of that
program.
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