Google Wallet and Google Offers can combine to form the first ubiquitous mobile payment service via Android and other smartphones ... assuming consumers buy into the idea.
Google Wallet, the pending
mobile payment service formed with Citgroup, MasterCard and Sprint, is an
ambitious plan to get consumers to leave their physical billfolds at home and
use their Android smartphones as their payment gateway at several retailers.
The
concept, which relies on near-field communication (NFC) technology for
close-range payment processing, is simple enough despite the fact that Google
hurdled several technology and political barriers with its partners.
Wallet
is the payment platform, but
Google
Offers is the key incentive to push users there, offering local deals to
people who can scan them with the phone's NFC reader to store them and redeem
them at point-of-sale terminals that read NFC. Deals will hit users' inboxes.
During
a
demonstration
at Google's New York office May 26, Osama Bedier, Google's vice president of
payments, showed how the service works from the Sprint Nexus S 4G smartphone.
This Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" phone, equipped with an NFC chip from
NXP, is currently the only handset that will run Wallet.
Bedier
launched the Google Wallet application on the phone and attached the Wallet app
to his Google account. This step is crucial to enable Wallet to sync all
discounts collected from the Google Offers service that will serve as the key
incentive for using Wallet, Bedier said.
Bedier
entered a PIN number and opted to add a CitiGroup MasterCard to the service.
After he entered his personal information, the info then reached the trusted
services manager First Data, which communicated with the NFC chip and assigned
that credit card to the phone.
Bedier
also noted that a Google prepaid card comes with every Wallet. A consumer can
simply click to add money from any credit card to the prepaid card.
Once
this is set up, Bedier could tap and pay at any of the 124,000-plus retail
locations in the U.S. (more than 311,000 locations worldwide) that accept
MasterCard's PayPass mobile payment service.
Bedier
also showed how to redeem a Google Offer. After searching for and finding a 20
percent off coupon from American Eagle, Bedier fired up his Wallet app,
navigated to the Offers section, and scanned the coupon into his phone via the
NFC reader in the phone.
An
American Eagle representative joined Bedier on stage with a real point-of-sale
terminal from VeriFone System and NFC reader from VivoTech. Bedier simply
tapped his phone to the terminal to redeem his discount and pay for the shorts.
Email
Print
