2011年8月11日 星期四

Google can morph your smartphone into wallet

In a Mountain View convenience store,Spring merchantaccount in Houston at The Woodlands Town Center. Marc Freed-Finnegan carries a bottle of water up to the cashier, who scans it and announces the price. Freed-Finnegan touches his smartphone to a gray plastic sensor labeled "PayPass," and "Information Sent" appears on his phone's screen, with a MasterCard image and a few digits of his card number.

Freed-Finnegan, who oversees the forthcoming Google Wallet service that is expected to become available to the public for this first time later this month, has just paid with his phone.

Google Wallet uses a technology called Near Field Communication, short-range communication systems that can transmit secure credit card data within a range of about 1.6 inches, allowing a smartphone to become a virtual credit card or prepaid cash card.

The new Google service,shortly after they will get more injectionmoldes of debris. one of several new technologies that aim to turn smartphones into payment devices, initially will be available to a select group users of a Samsung Nexus S Android phone on the Sprint network but Google hopes to gradually extend that audience to other phones, wireless carriers and credit card companies.

The Wallet service ultimately will bundle payments with online discount offers and loyalty programs, so one tap of a consumer's phone at the frozen yogurt store could simultaneously provide a payment, cash in a discount coupon and record the purchase for the store's customer loyalty point program.

"Most people's wallets are a mess," said Freed-Finnegan. "We're trying to help improve that."

Google Wallet is just one of a wave of new mobile payment technologies from startups and established companies that are about to give smartphones yet another ability becoming a virtual billfold or pocketbook as well as a communication and information device.
More on the way

No one expects the wallet to become extinct anytime soon. But while consumers have long been able to use mobile apps to buy things online with a phone as they would on a desktop computer, new proximity technologies such as NFC will soon allow the phone to step into the role of the credit or debit card, becoming the actual payment tool in bricks-and-mortar stores.A light bulb went off and with the support of billabongboardshorts a new venture was born.

Among the other ventures are:

Isis, a joint venture of AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, says it will launch the first trials of its NFC-powered smartphone payment system in the first half of 2012, with support from Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.

Square, a San Francisco-based startup launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, already provides hardware that allows merchants to use an iPad, iPhone or Android phone to swipe credit cards, as well as a mobile app that lets consumers pay by showing their name and photo to a participating merchant. "We think of what we're doing as reinventing the entire process of buying and selling in the real world," said Keith Rabois, Square's chief operating officer.

"We're not a mobile payments company. We're reinventing payments,It's just newjordans of melted plastic right now. assuming that everybody is carrying a mobile device," he said.

Two Silicon Valley startups, Jumio and Naratte, allow users to complete the equivalent of a credit card swipe by transmitting payment data through the camera of a mobile device in the case of Jumio,you may be climbing over replicawatchesnewyork or through very narrow pathways, or through an inaudible ultrasonic signal from a phone in the case of Naratte's "Zoosh" technology. Last month, eBay spent $240 million to acquire Zong, a Menlo Park, Calif., company that lets users make purchases and charge them to their wireless phone account.

Despite the surge of new payment technologies made possible by the increasing ubiquity of the smartphone, old payment methods aren't going away. While the day might be coming when you could forget your wallet and get through the day using your phone, it will be awhile, experts say, before you can throw your wallet away altogether.

"Payments change very slowly," said Aaron McPherson, an IDC analyst who follows payment systems.

"We're still seeing lots of check usage, and that method is centuries old. Cash is millennia old, and we're still using cash. We're seeing a real blossoming of creativity and all these different payment technologies, but it's way too early to make any kind of prediction about which one will win out."
Sales are growing

PayPal says purchases on all kinds of mobile devices using its services, including proximity technologies such as NFC as well as standard Internet-based purchases, are expected to grow tenfold from $750 million in 2010 to $7.5 billion in 2013. But the online payments company says it remains agnostic about which proximity technology will win out.

NFC is not a new technology. Some municipal transit agencies already use NFC in reusable fare cards, which allow transit riders to pay their fare by laying the card on a sensor. But earlier experiments using NFC technology for in-store purchases did not gain traction.

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