Google Wallet Launches: Sprint Customers Can Make Purchases With Cell Phone

By Fionna Agomuoh, Christian Post Contributor Monday, September 19, 2011

With the launch of Google Wallet on Monday, people can now use their cell phones in order to make purchases.

Sprint’s Samsung Nexus S is the first smartphone to work with Google Wallet. With just a swipe or tap, Nexus S users can pay for things on their phone.

The digital wallet works like a debit card. Using another credit or debit card, you load money onto your Google Wallet and then use the balance to complete purchases.

While Google is the first company to implement this method, both Visa and American Express, in conjunction with other mobile wireless carriers, are making plans to establish their own digital wallets.

Currently, Citibank, MasterCard and Sprint are Google’s sole partners in the digital wallet venture. Only Citibank MasterCards can be used to load money onto Google Wallet from a Sprint-powered Samsung Nexus S 4G smartphone.

However, Google says it has licensed the NFC (near-field communications) technology that powers Google Wallet to three other major credit card companies -American Express, Visa, and Discover. As newer versions of Google Wallet are released, more card companies will be available.

Future Android smartphones will also be outfitted with NFC technology to expand the variety of devices compatible with Google Wallet.

"In the future, our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets," Osama Bedier, Google’s vice president of payments, wrote on the official Google blog.

The Google Wallet commercial, released last month, depicts "Seinfeld" character George Costanza losing control of the contents of his overstuffed wallet after seeing an ad for Google Wallet and tearing off a “more-information” slip to place inside the bulky wallet. The caption reads, “Goodbye Wallet.”