Its partnership with Google Android has already proven fruitful as Samsung grows to be one of the market leaders in the smartphone market. With Google's constant new innovations, this has consistently brought benefits to all those providing the android system. So will its latest product, the google wallet, prove to be more of the same for Samsung - which is one of the only providers of the service - or is one step to far for risk averse shoppers?
Google Wallet to Pay Customers to Spur Growth | ||||
Google Wallet plans to give customers $10 to try its new NFC service, as the company aims to spur growth following initially slow adoption. Google intends to offer this deal at select stores in five U.S. cities before the holidays. Google employees will travel to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. and Washington, D.C. to host demonstrations and help customers make trial payments from Samsung Nexus S demo devices. Among participating merchants are Jamba Juice, Walgreens, Peet's Coffee & Tea, and many others. Sprint and Samsung are also set to participate in the demos, scheduled for various weeks between now and January 12. Google's move to showcase Wallet follows the service's weak adoption, which likely results from its limited reach on few handsets, but may grow as NFC becomes more popular. For now Wallet is only available on the Samsung's Nexus S, one of the few NFC-equipped handsets on the market. In addition, just a handful of merchants possess the often-expensive NFC-enabled payment terminals necessary for customers to use the service. Wallet may expand to other smartphones and merchants soon, now that industry group NFC Forum has gained support from Isis. The coalition of credit card companies, carriers and smartphone makers may help the Forum standardize wireless mobile payment technology enough that manufacturers and stores become eager to invest in NFC chips and terminals. Wallet is also limited in that it supports just two payment methods, Citi MasterCard and Google pre-paid cards. Rival mobile payment companies Square and PayPal, which don't use NFC technology in their systems, allow all major credit cards, putting Wallet at a possible disadvantage. But the search giant reported licensing Visa's PayWave, which would let Wallet work at thousands of payment terminals already equipped with Visa technology. Google also says it has plans to bring Visa, Discover and American Express on board in the future. In the meantime, Google may spur enthusiasm for its Wallet service with a $10 promotion during the holiday shopping season. The company will need more than justfeatured offers in the long term, however, if it desires to make a sizeable dent in the mobile payment industry. |
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