Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of Commerce, took the stage at Google’s massive New York City HQ to announce Google Wallet and Google Offers.
Tilenius made it clear that the platform will be an open platform. She invited “payment networks, carriers, and banks to join Google in creating tomorrow’s shopping experience”. And some of those partners are already on board. Citi, Mastercard, FirstData, and Sprint are the initial partners.
Tilenius said the field trials will begin today and it will be official out this summer. As expected, it will be using NFC technology. By 2014, Tilenius notes that 50 percent of smartphones will have NFC built into them — that’s 150 million devices.
With Wallet, you’ll be able to add your existing credit cards (though only Citi-backed Mastercards are a partner right now of the major card companies).
Google Wallet will work with Mastercard Paypass. This means right now 300,000 merchants around the world and 120,000 in the U.S. are technically ready.
The other component of the announcement is Google Offers. These work seamlessly with Google Wallet. You find an offer you want, save it to Wallet with a click and you’re ready. You can redeem them by tapping the phone at the point of sale. Or you can show the offer to a cashier. Via Techcrunch
