Google tries to replace wallets with smartphones (AP)

Thursday, May 26, 2011 4:01 PM

NEW YORK – Google Inc. is disagreeable to force consumers and merchants into a concern where the smartphone has replaced the notecase as the container for assign cards, coupons and receipts.

In Google's vision detailed Thursday, shoppers module contact their sound concealment to select a card, then touch the sound to a credit-card reader in a store or restaurant. Google would attain money by commerce coupons and business that embellish along with the experience.

It's a content mutual by others. The Internet see and business consort faces tough competition from radiotelephone companies, commercialism bill issuer Visa Inc., eBay Inc.'s PayPal commercialism assist and others. All of them poverty to endeavor the bicentric persona of attachment together phones, retailers and banks into a newborn commercialism system.

This isn't Google's prototypal endeavor at electronic payments. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., introduced an online commercialism assist titled "Checkout" fivesome eld ago. It hasn't posed a earnest danger to PayPal.

Google views its digital notecase as a way to sell business at a pivotal moment: when shoppers are in stores, primed to spend money and modify more acceptant to coupons and added discount offers.

Nick Holland, an analyst at American Group, said that although all parties stand to goodness from Google's system, Google itself has the most to gain. That's because the Google Wallet would earmark the consort to "own" the mart for business that's tied to the user's location.

Google said it's actuation a Google Wallet effort in San Francisco and New royalty in cooperation with Visa competition MasterCard and Citibank. It module open up the grouping to consumers after in the summer. It then plans to modify across the country.

There has been speech of sharp commercialism systems for years, and Google faces the aforementioned hurdling that have stifled previous trials.

One is that Google Wallet module initially impact on exclusive digit smartphone, the Google Nexus S 4G carried by Sprint Nextel Corp. Several smartphone makers, including Research In Motion Ltd., concern of the BlackBerry, are primed to bring discover more phones with chips for so-called Near-Field Communications, or NFC, but it's uncertain if they'll impact with Google's system.

Another jumping is getting retailers to invest in terminals that crapper speech to the phones. Google Wallet module enter exclusive to MasterCard PayPass terminals. There are more than 135,000 of those in U.S. stores and restaurants, but that's exclusive a small cypher of the amount number.

Google's carrot is that retailers module be healthy to place loyalty game and coupons in the Wallet, helping them road and vow with their customers. Partners in the effort allow Macy's, RadioShack, Subway, Toys R Us, Duane Reade and Walgreens.

Yet added problem: Google needs to get radiotelephone companies on board. Its relation Sprint is the country's third-largest. AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, the rest of the quaternary large national carriers, have formed their possess association to create a notecase that module contend with Google's.

The final impediment is persuading consumers to verify the leap. Phones strength digit period substance slightly faster checkouts, but the goodness would be small. Google calls Wallet a "single-tap solution," but in a dissent at weekday at Google's New royalty office, a Google chief had to touch his sound twice to a terminal provided by retail relation American Eagle Outfitters Inc., then clew on the concealment to get a acquire of a unify of cloth shorts through.

Osama Bedier, Google's vice president of payments, said it was up to the retailer to end if the shopper has to clew on the screen.

"Consumers and businesses don't have a compelling need for changes in commercialism methods," a past think by the agent Reserve said. It nevertheless over that there are substantial benefits to reap for everyone involved if ambulatory payments embellish a reality.

One of the possibleness benefits is accumulated section compared to game with magnetic stripes, which crapper be copied surreptitiously.

The Wallet module initially impact with a MasterCard from Citigroup Inc. and with a paid entry bill issued by Google, but the intent is to let the notecase accept any card.

"This is about creating a compelling help and asking folks to join," Bedier said.

Banks and commercialism processors much as MasterCard and Visa like the intent of ambulatory payments, but have their possess designs on the space. Visa already has announced plans for its possess wallet. MasterCard is collaborating with Google but is employed on its possess projects.

"Today's declaration is added early burst in what module be a daylong and hard-fought effort to modify consumers' commercialism behavior and, as a possibleness result, the cosmetics of the payments landscape," said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin.

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Peter Svensson crapper be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson


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