Google Wallet May End Up Inside Your Actual Wallet

[](http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D_-D4rowCl-MDbvGUrRmFqsCDjc/0/da)
[](http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/D_-D4rowCl-MDbvGUrRmFqsCDjc/1/da)

Several outlets are reporting, based on screenshots posted by Android Police that Google is (or "may be" -- CNet calls the report "loosely sourced") about to introduce a lower-tech variant on its smartphone-based Google Wallet payment system. Instead of transferring payment information from an NFC-equipped phone, this would mean a physical payment card (like a conventional plastic credit or debit card), but one linked via Google's databanks to the user's existing bank or credit accounts. Upsides: less to carry, a simple way to suspend or cancel service on them (should the card be lost or stolen), and doesn't require you to carry your phone to make a credit or debit transaction -- handy, since NFC readers are still thin on the ground. Downside: while perhaps no worse than putting the same information on your phone, it's one more step toward giving a third party all of your personal information in one place. A card that fits in a wallet probably makes a lot of sense: I live in a city with at least three pay-by-phone options in trials or fully available (CitiBank, Isis, and Google Wallet), but I can't buy ice cream or coffee with them yet. And there's no reason a card-shaped token couldn't use mag-stripes and NFC, too.

[](http://twitter.com/home?status=Google+Wallet+May+End+Up+Inside+Your+Actual+Wallet%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FTDuRjp) [](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F12%2F11%2F04%2F1624238%2Fgoogle-wallet-may-end-up-inside-your-actual-wallet%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook) [](http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/04/1624238/google-wallet-may-end-up-inside-your-actual-wallet?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=googleplus)

[Read more of this story](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/04/1624238/google-wallet-may-end-up-inside-your-actual-wallet?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed) at Slashdot.


URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/7e9dYsCynHc/google-wallet-may-end-up-inside-your-actual-wallet