ePayment Solutions Merchant Services Blog

Image via CrunchBase

There's no reason that almost everything in your wallet can't be handled by your smartphone.

In some circles, the notion of a smartphone acting like a credit or debit card is fascinating, and you see story upon story about mobile payment-enabled smartphones and the potential rise of PayPal, the telcos, and such as the new payment processors. Who cares? Even if Visa and MasterCard were somehow to let go of that billion-dollar processing business, you're merely replacing one financial processor with another.

The fact that a smartphone could act as a card is an inconsequential change. You still have to carry a wallet, and as long as that's the case, a simple plastic card remains easier to use, given that the technology for reading them is universal and all the proposed mobile alternatives require new, often separate, readers and work only with certain vendors -- you'll still be carrying plastic for the other banks' and merchants' systems. As a friend recently said, payments can't get more mobile than they already are.

[ Learn about consumerization of IT in person March 4-6, 2012, at IDG's CITE conference in San Francisco. | Windows 8 is coming, and InfoWorld can help you get ready with the Windows 8 Deep Dive PDF special report, which explains Microsoft's bold new direction for Windows, the new Metro interface for tablet and desktop apps, the transition from Windows 7, and more. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobilize newsletter. ]

Image via Wikipedia

Contactless payments have been something of a curiosity in the credit card industry. MasterCard's PayPass has been around for the better part of a decade, but merchants and banks alike seem hesitant to adopt the technology required to make the system work, and inconsistent implementation adds to the confusion -- particularly for customers. Google's new mobile phone-based Wallet service has the potential to transform the technology from its current status as a transaction turkey, to a future as a checkout champion. But will it work? We spent a week with a Wallet-enabled Nexus S 4G, using the device to pay whenever we encountered a MasterCard PayPass terminal. Unfortunately, that wasn't often enough, limiting us to just a handful of transactions in the first week. Still, with Google just beginning to roll out the service and only a limited selection of launch partners ready to go, it's impossible to deliver a complete verdict just yet. Jump past the break for an inside look at Google Wallet, including a video of the service in action, and a brief look at what the world of contactless payments may look like in the future.

Image via CrunchBase

Google today announced an agreement to use current Visa technology to enable mobile payments at retail locations, boosting its e-wallet initiative as the market becomes increasingly competitive.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced it is licensing Visa's PayWave technology, an innovative NFC-based payment technology which enables consumers to make payments at retail locations by waving mobile phones in front of a payment terminal.

PayWave is currently accepted at hundreds of thousands of retail locations worldwide.

Visa account holders will therefore be able to add credit, debit and prepaid accounts to Google Wallet. Google Wallet allows customers to purchase items by tapping or swiping their Android smartphones in front of a merchant's payment reader, enabled by near-field communications, or NFC.