Within touching distance
Google is teaming up with MasterCard and Citigroup to launch a contactless payment system in the US this year, according to the WSJ's sources. The system will use NFC technology as supported by Android 2.3 and built into the Nexus S handset.
This doesn't come as any great surprise. The launch of Android Gingerbread, with the Nexus S as the exemplar of its capabilities, was clearly designed to bring attention to NFC and the things it enables. While NFC chip-makers like NXP have been keen to bring attention to applications such as easy information exchange to smartphones and automotive uses, contactless payments remain the the Holy Grail of NFC use-cases.
Many major companies, such as mobile chip designer ARM, have been working on technologies designed to make banking and paying for things with your mobile phone a simple and secure process, but all the clever tech in the world is no good without buy-in from the financial services sector.
The lead in this area is being taken by the major credit card companies, which have a strong interest in further enabling people to use their services. Visa has been talking the topic up in recent press releases, and features contactless payment solutions prominently in its current TV advertising campaign. At the same time MasterCard has been talking up its PayPass technology.
Google - and other mobile platforms - are the middle-men in all this. Once the technology is in place and the financial services providers are on-board, mobile devices are required to bring contactless payment to the marketplace. So the confirmation that Google - owner of the current largest smartphone platform - is on the case, indicates contactless payments via mobile phones will soon become a reality for the mainstream consumer.
For anyone who requires stronger sources than the WSJ's ubiquitous ‘people familiar with the matter', Engadget has found a recently-published Google patent for an e-commerce system in which Google acts as the middle-man between the merchant and the customer and gets visibility of what is being bought in return. It's thought that Google could use this information to add value to the advertising that still comprises the vast majority of its business.
