Google Releases NFC-Based Wallet

We have heard NFC-based wallet for quite some time. Now reality is close to come true. Fast company reported a rumor that Google will official release its digit wallet based on its Android-powered smartphones. Similar like iPhone changes the way people use phone, NFC based digit wallet can  dramatically change the way making payment using their mobile phone. 

Google's idea goes beyond replacing a credit card in your wallet with a wireless system in your phone--tallying with everything we've predicted about NFC-enabled shopping. Wallet, Google hopes, and the accompanying Offers system is "mobile, local, personalized, serendipitous, and open." Giving an example of walking into a grocery store, Tilenius demonstrated that a Google Nexus S phone could pop up a grocery shopping list because it's detected where you are. When you'd collected the goods, you'd pay at the checkout merely by tapping your phone to the sensor, and the transaction happens instantly, along with loyalty point awards and so on.

The system supports multiple cards (by default Citibank to start with) but there's provision for other providers cards which are all securely stored along with PIN data, and there's also a Google pre-paid credit card which you can "top-up" by using other payments systems. Special offers are also targeted at you, based on your previous shopping history at the store--a trick which leverages Google's vast databases and expertise in targeted advertising--and ultimately Google thinks you'll put "everything" in its Wallet, including digital editions of your driving license and car keys. Google stressed this is a real system, not a proof of concept, with over 300,000 PayPass installations and retailers integrating the tech right now. (Jack Dorsey, are you listening?)

And then comes "Offers," a system to partner the Wallet and add in the extra functionality that makes it a real reinvention of shopping. Offers has been around for a few months and is, basically, Google's attempt to steal Groupon's--and maybe Facebook Deals'--business. While much of clients' interactivity with Groupon happens at home, on a PC with printouts for vouchers and so on, Offers is going to be more about being mobile and tapping into the rich data stream generated by your shopping habits--Tilenius noted Offers would be delivered as a daily email (very much like Groupon) but also through apps. And unlike Groupons coupons it all happens in a single move when you pay for the product you're saving cash on, via Wallet. Plus, as Google demonstrated onstage, there are novel new shopping ideas enabled by this system, like NFC-tagged posters which you'd tap your phone on to collect a coupon.

To appease security and privacy worries, Google's Nexus S phone has a hardware level secure encryption chip, and to prevent your card data from being scanned just when you're walking along (a very 21st Century version of pickpocketing) there's no transmission of your data until you're at a cash desk and have "unlocked" your Wallet app. How this translates to Google's plans to make Wallet "open" for other systems to interact with, we're not sure.

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