back to article Google leads shoppers into pay-by-wave future

Macy's is to join the growing list of American retailers who'll accept payment with the tap of the telephone, or card, but no one is talking about the latter these days. Google is doing a sterling job pushing Americans to accept proximity payments, in the form of Google Wallet. Having signed up some iconic names including Toys …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still giving stuff away

    Good to know that their strategy seems to be to pay for people's shopping. Is this their long term plan?

    I'll be first in line for Google NFC phone if they offer to pick up my supermarket bills. Hell, I'll even watch an ad or two.

    Otherwise what's the point? I still have to carry the cards around as a backup in case the system fails, the reader at the shop isn't working, the cashier is clueless, or the phone gets stolen.

    What's the big advantage of swiping a phone?

    1. Craigness

      The point

      A phone allows for more security and can show you your balance immediately. I think you mean "what's the point in swiping a non-Apple phone?" If this was Apple everyone would be gushing about it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      advantage? you get

      a free bag to carry around (like the guy in the photo) that identifies you as a googleboi gimp

    3. Owen Milton

      Re: Still giving stuff away

      That's rather the point. Your cards redundant. If the reader at the shop isn't working, they can't process anything, be it cards or phone. The cashier being clueless doesn't matter, as indicated by the fact that people can surprise the cashiers "Oh I didn't know it could do that".

      This allows you to carry a phone and your ID instead of a phone, and a wallet full of cards and your ID. And allows you to keep an organized eye on what you're spending where. That's about it.

    4. p3ngwin1

      "What's the big advantage of swiping a phone?"

      do you remember when cars had to be manually opened and started with metal keys?

      can you think of going back to NOT using your radio-controlled key-fob to open your car with central-locking ?

      NFC payments are the death-knell of physical money. it's the future happening right now for e-commerce and you're too blind to understand the significance of the financial-age you live in.

      NFC is going to be everywhere before you even know it, it is already in security, finance, tracking, etc and you will one day, very soon, wonder what it was like when you had to carry money around in paper and metal coins around your body.

      just as you probably at present can't imagine what it was like WITHOUT credit/debit cards and you only had physical money before the internet-age for shopping with Paypal, etc.

      seems you've become very accustomed to your current technology comforts, and are either too young and naive to know or remember a past without them, or maybe you're just myopic and can't see potential ion anything like NFC.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what we need now

    Is a panhandler version so we can just wave at bums to give them a quarter, instead of having to risk actually touching them.

  3. Martin Gregorie

    OK, so tell me how I know

    "millions of credit cards already have the technology embedded, but very few people use them or even know they're there" .

    Obvious question: how do you know if a card is NFC-enabled?

    Is there some sort of logo, hologram, or what?

    1. Bill Ray (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: OK, so tell me how I know

      There is indeed a logo, which appears just below the hologram on my card:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/05/barclays_nfc_survey/

      Bill.

      1. RosslynDad
        Thumb Up

        Nominative Determinism?

        Surely an author called Bill Ray on a NFC payment system is one of the best examples of Nominative Determinism?

  4. ad47uk
    Thumb Down

    I am never going to use NFC, on a card or phone, too unsecure for me. Cash first or chip and pin if i really have to on my debit card. If my debit card comes with NFC next year which i doubt, I will get it disabled

    1. Starkadder
      Thumb Up

      Right on

      I had lunch the other day with the guy who says he introduced chip and pin to the UK banks. He was amazed when I paid by cash, waving his credit card with NFC logo at me and saying that was the way forward. My answer was that the guy at the next table had just read his card with some nifty electronics he acquired in Israel (or wherever) and paid for his own lunch on my friend's card. Since chip and pin I have pretty much gone back to cash except for unavoidable occasions - and always sign for credit card purchases. Then, and only then, do I have full legal protection against fraud and theft.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Slow

    No wonder they never show the full transaction on the video. The system is slow...

    Doubt we'll be using it on the tube anytime soon.

    The logo seems appropriate though, it's almost identical to Google's old Wave. I predict a similar ending.

  6. PAW

    You say, "Verifone, the industry leader ... long ago stopped selling anything without NFC hardware, so proximity payments will come though the usual equipment cycle even if retailers aren't particularly interested."

    And that "millions of credit cards already have the technology embedded"

    So it sounds like the competition has more than a foothold. T

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