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| Google attempts to revolutionize the payment system with Google Wallet |
Today, Google announced its brand new venture in completely digitizing our lives, Google Wallet.
The concept is actually pretty simple; your mobile phone becomes your wallet. With the use of near-field communication hardware (NFC) and a Google-designed app, your phone replaces your debit, credit, and store cards at the cash register.
Google teamed up with Mastercard's PayPass technology, which allowed consumers to hold up their plastic with special embedded chips to a device to pay, instead of swiping their cards.
This time around, however, they are holding up their phones instead.
Using PayPass has allowed Google to have their new service working with many, many merchants across the country. The hardware, on the other hand, isn't quite ready yet. The only phone to be equipped with Google Wallet at launch is the Nexus S 4G, currently on the Sprint network. They do say that other phones will be available soon.
As crazy as this sounds, I actually REALLY like this idea. Carrying my wallet around campus is a unnecessary hassle, and if my phone (cough, cough, Apple, cough, cough), could act as a wallet for me, since I carry it around with me all of the time, that would really be amazing.
It would be even better if they allowed users to manage their credit card balances and consolidate all of the information to help with budgeting. It could totally revolutionize how people handle their finances!
Do you think Google Wallet could take off, or is just a disaster waiting to happen? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!
i think this is a disaster waiting to happen as far as theft. If you think about it in a thief's eyes..."i have access to someone's wallet as well as getting a coughcoughapplecough phone all in one swipe? why not...". It just seems too easy. however, people have different lifestyles and carry their confidential information in different ways....(purses, bookbags, pockets, safes, etc.)
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