Google Wallet for UK in Time for the Olympics

As we prepare for the 2012 Olympics in London it seems that hosting them has brought a number of advantages our way! We are going to be getting Google Wallet in the UK in time for the Olympic Games.

They are going to be bringing its NFC payment project through into London in time for the Games which will take place from July – August 2012. Hopefully the rumour is that Google Wallet will be in the UK between January – March 2012.

The Google Wallet works by allowing contactless payments to anyone who has an NFC enabled handset. Currently Google are in discussion with a number of banks, distributors and retailers within the UK in order to set up some deals which will see contactless payment available for those with the NFC capability and thus it will make it so easy for them to purchase products and services.

Google Wallet first launched in Autumn 2010 in the US; Google backed the NFC technology by choosing to incorporate it into their Google Nexus S phone. Since Google have included it into their phones other smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC and most noticeably Apple have also followed suit.

NFC or near-field communication as it is most commonly known is a technology which is getting a lot of coverage recently thanks to its inclusion in the Google Nexus S phone. There have been rumours that Apple will include it into their iPhone 5 although this has not been confirmed. According to research one in five smartphones will have the NFC technology integrated into them by 2014.

Although NFC seems a fairly new technology it actually isn’t. It is simply an evolution of radio-frequency identification or RFID technology and has been used for years.

Google has great plans for the future where NFC can be used to get information by simply tapping a phone or device against a specialised Google-branded location card. They further want the phones and devices to act as a payment system and in the future for them to even replace credit cards.

Phones have become less of an accessory and more of a necessity; if a payment method could be inbuilt into them then would we need to take out a wallet with cards anymore?

Brick technology web design Lancashire invites you to comment using the box below and let us know what you think about NFC and how it is going to be used hopefully in the future.