Google Wallet – make your phone your wallet
In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards.
Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.
Google Wallet is an Android app that makes your phone your wallet. It stores virtual versions of your existing plastic cards on your phone. Simply tap your phone to pay and redeem offers using near field communication, or NFC.
Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. It will eventually hold many if not all of the cards you keep in your leather wallet today. And because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will be able to do more than a regular wallet ever could, like storing thousands of payment cards and Google Offers but without the bulk. Eventually your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet. And every offer and loyalty point will be redeemed automatically with a single tap via NFC.
When Google announced Chrome yesterday morning the company also released the code for the OS, explaining that development will be done in the open from this week on. The Chromium OS project includes Google’s current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development.