

Google Wallet - A Missed Opportunity? - Cherian_Abraham
http://www.droplabs.co/?page_id=24

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zitterbewegung
So what would be the alternative? If you don't use NFC what would you use?
Doesn't this mean that a startup or some other organization could use the
ideas here as a new and exciting business?

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rjd
They have rolled out a swipe to pay trial system in New Zealand for the Rugby
World Cup. Its essentially the same thing, except it uses a chip off your
credit card and not one in the cell phone.

Thats going to be Googles biggest competitor to this, the fact any wallet can
operate the same way, and well you still need to take your wallet with you for
various reasons e.g. carrying your oyster card in London for example.

Obviously win-win for the credit companies, I doubt they care which technology
takes off.

Of interest the threshold is NZD$80 per transaction without authorization,
which I guess is around USD$60, and I think it works even if you have PIN
authorization set up e.g. it overrides the PIN at certain terminals.

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vicngtor
If this is the case I am sure they will have someone look into the possibility
of integrating this card system in their wallet.

If the card indeed does make sense, it won't be too late to do both NFC and
the card. The fundamental core of the wallet is not the NFC technology but the
ecosystem that it is trying to build.

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rjd
The cards are a NFC system designed by Visa.

There is no if, its in public field trials ATM, at least one event had 200,000
people at it. Visa has deployed terminals at all the sporting events and to
pubs around the stadiums.

What is going to be fun is near field sniffers, harvest peoples data etc... I
can imagine walking through a crowd and sniffing out dozens of cards etc...
the problem of course will be using the data, unless you can work out a way
quickly convert small value purchases to cash...

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vicngtor
rjd: If you are afraid of something like the Android Beam, then I would be too
worried.

Any sensitive data will have at least a password level nfc security measure to
prevent sniffing. It's not like you can just take your NFC enabled device and
sniff devices with google wallet installed. You would require explicit
permission to gain any data.

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kleiba
Wow, what I find shocking is that I'd already completely forgotten about
Google Wallet.

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jinushaun
I see the GW scanners all over the place now, but know no one with a GW
compatible phone. The tough part about launching a phone-based NFC payment
system in the US is the damn 2-year contract lock-in. We probably won't see
noticeable device saturation till late 2012 or early 2013.

