Remember Google Wallet? Announced in May 2011, the goal Google set out to achieve was to get you to pay for things using your mobile phone instead of the piece of plastic you’ve been carrying around for decades. The service launched on one phone, the Nexus S, on one operator, Sprint, and came with support for one bank, Citibank. Since then Google hasn’t said a thing, not even a peep, about the service. Are people using it? What stores are adding support for Google Wallet? We have no idea.
Now America’s operators are equally bad from a public relations perspective. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon formed a company called ISIS back in November 2010. They said they were going to bring mobile payments to the masses, but since then nothing has happened. There are supposed to be trials taking place this summer, but we don’t know if they’re actually happening since no one is issuing any press releases.
So are mobile payments dead on arrival? Not yet. According to NFC Times, Google is hard at work on Wallet 2.0, which is said to be more “cloud focused”, whatever the hell that means. More importantly, the article goes on to say Sprint, who was the only company that actually supported Google Wallet, will be rolling out their own service called “Touch”.
Will Google’s second attempt be any better than their first? Will operators start taking payments seriously? We haven’t got the faintest idea, and to be perfectly frank we’re starting to think that the mobile industry isn’t going to take NFC based payments seriously until Apple steps in and introduces their own thing. Are we going to see such an announcement later today at WWDC? Again, we can only speculate at this point.
Do you even want to use a mobile phone to pay for things? Is your wallet that much of an inconvenience? Let us know.
[Via: The Verge]