Google Mobile Wallet Payment Service Will Replace Plastic and Paper Money With Smartphones

With on-going tablet and smartphone fiasco, we have already witnessed a paradigm change in the way we do things. Google Inc has finally taken the wraps off its NFC based Wallet payment service which will allow US shoppers to use their phones to pay up at the check-out counter. The tech giant intends to prod consumers and merchants into a world where your smartphone would easily replace your both paper and plastic money. The service will be first made available in summer this year in New York and Sans Francisco and eventually reaching out to other regions.

MasterCard, Citigroup, Sprint and transaction processing company First Data have joined hands with Google for this venture which seeks to compete with a similar service that will be soon unveiled by Visa and its allies. For now, the Sprint Nexus 4G will be the only compatible phone but the support basket will be enlarged in future. This service will either be funded through either a Citi MasterCard or Google Prepaid where the latter can be fueled with any other card. This certainly means that no matter which company’s debit/credit card you use, you’ll still be able to make the best out of this.For now, the app will only work on Android phones and it will ride on MasterCard's "PayPass" technology, which lets shoppers tap cards for payment. Google has also partnered with several retailers including Macy's Inc, American Eagle Outfitters Inc and Subway to extend loyalty programs and discount offers to their users.

With this Wallet mobile payment service, Google also announced ‘Goggle Offers’ which will tip its users on daily deals and coupons. So if the user happens to pass by a signed up retailer’s poster, say Subway for instance, he can simply tap on an icon-like area which would trigger a coupon in his mobile wallet. He can then save the coupon and later redeem it for his purchases.

It’s going to be a while before this wallet mobile system actually becomes a way of life for people just the way credit/debit/gift cards are today. You could be wondering what would happen if one ever lost their smartphone. Google has made this service password secured and in case of loss or theft, it would deactivate the card pretty much the same way a bank does for its card holders. No word on iOS and other OS integration but if we are looking at unified payment system here, multi-platform support is inevitable.