Google Wallet & Google Offers

Yesterday in NYC Google launched two amazing services - Google Wallet and Google Offers. Google Offers is nothing but Google’s reply to Groupon. To know more about Groupon visit its wiki page or my blog which I wrote sometime back.

Google Wallet is pretty interesting as it is something which will make your credit card, disappear. NFC or Near Field Communication is the underlying technology on which Google Wallet works. I blogged about NFC and its applications about three months back and if you want to refresh your memory then check that blog here. Sprint, Citi and Mastercard are the primary partners along with Google in the launch of this service. Google Wallet will be compatible with Google’s Nexus S 4G Android phone and slowly and gradually will be available on other devices as well. Security is one thing on which Google is working pretty hard and it seems First Data (Trusted services manager) will be working with Google in order to make Google Wallet impenetrable. ‘NXP PN65’ chip which was part of the Nexus S 4G will be useful in making the transactions more secure and will provide multiple security levels. This chip has got a lot of protections built into it like tamper sensors and protection from laser attacks. The chip will only tuned ON when using the Google Wallet else the chip will just sit in the hardware layer quietly.

Google is planning to officially release Google Wallet in San Francisco and NYC this summer and slowly will make the service available in other major cities as well. As per the team from Google, global launch of this service is near and Google will soon provide the update on that as well. Over 100,000 merchants ready for Google Wallet today and some of the major names include, Macy's, Subway, Walgreens & Toys 'R Us.

According to Google, Google Wallet will eventually replace your wallet but that will take some time as you have no other options but to use plastic in case you lost your phone or your phone battery is dead. The technology looks promising and I am sure this will be implemented big time in the coming phones including iPhone, the only thing to worry about at this point is the security which we all know can be compromised any level.