Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Google Wallet

Google has just recently announced their new technology known as Google Wallet. With Google Wallet, users are able to use their Android Phones to pay for real world products merely by tapping it onto computerized card readers. Currently this feature is only available on Sprint Nexus in the United States even with a Google Wallet enable phone. This limitation is due to the relative new technology and the risk of more problems if too wide a user base were allowed to use this feature. Google has decided to take things slow, one step at a time, after all, it does involve money of their users and legal problems could be abundant if a bug arose. At the moment, Google Wallet is compatible with Citi MasterCard and Google’s own prepaid card. There are plans however to allow Visa, Discover, and American Express as well.

This feature is a pretty interesting technological leap as it does away with standard credit cards and places even more importance on a person’s phone. Slowly society is moving towards having only a phone or some device that will hold all important personal belongings for maximum convenience. Hopefully the Google Wallet will have enough features to prevent misrepresentation and theft through proper identity checking each time a transaction is made and at the same time not too burdensome on the proper user.

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