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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Google Purportedly Testing NFC Payment Machines In NY/SF Stores

by Ray Willington
from http://hothardware.com/

Google may be opting out when it comes to joining the social networking game, but they're saying yes to mobile payments. The Samsung-built Nexus S was one of the first NFC-enabled smartphones to ship in America, and now Google is reportedly ready to start testing a mobile payment trial at stores in NY and SF. The Bloomberg article on the matter suggests that the trials could begin in four months, and it will let shoppers use their phones to buy items at those stores. NFC and contact-less payments have frequently been used to pay for mass transit, but particularly in America, it's still rare to see stores setup to accept NFC payments.


Google will be footing the bill to install these systems (VeriFone Systems) at stores, and the registers would reportedly "accept payments from mobile phones equipped with so-called near-field-communication technology." If you have an NFC phone, you'll need to connect a credit card with that account, and then you can tap your phone on the mobile terminal to check out. No one has confirmed the plans yet, but it all makes perfect sense. Google's very interested in getting deep into the NFC arena. This technology is poised to explode in America, and there's plenty Google can do from an advertising standpoint whenever location-based solutions are used. Hopefully it'll be showing up in even more cities soon.

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