Would You Trust Google With Your Money?

[vangogh]

This is one of those technologies that's coming and within a few years will likely be fairly common. The idea being that instead of using credit cards, we'll use out phones to pay for things.

Google is among the early players with Google Wallet (http://youtu.be/DsaJMhcLm_A) ( <-- 2 minute video explaining and showing how it works). Don't expect to be using this right away though. It's going to be available on one phone through Sprint and it's going to require merchants to start using the technology as well.

The basic idea is that their's an app on your phone connected to a credit card. To pay you pull out your phone and tap it or wave it near the payment terminal. The app instantly loads and I think you then need to approve the purchase and maybe choose which card to use. The technology used to transfer the information is Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is supposed to be completely secure.

A few months back when they first announced this I remember one issue being that if you lost your phone you would need to cancel your credit card to prevent someone from using your Google Wallet. I'm not sure if that's still true or if Google has provided a better solution. Again this is still pretty new and should probably be seen more as a test case than something we'll all be using in practice just yet. In time though I suspect NFC will be very common.

So would you trust Google to handle your money? How about another company like Apple or Microsoft or maybe PayPal. Before long they'll all probably have similar products. Could you see yourself trusting the idea of using your phone to pay or will you stick with cards and cash?

[KristineS]

I figured this was coming at some point.

I rarely carry cash or use it to pay for anything anymore. It's all my debit card and/or credit cards. I also buy a lot of stuff online, so I don't have a ton of issues with security. I guess that would be my first question about paying with your phone, though, how secure would that be? I suppose it wouldn't be any different than paying online, but you do hear a lot lately about people getting their phones hacked.

[vangogh]

I hardly carry much, if any, cash either. It comes in handy here or there like if I go out to lunch with a friend and we need to split the bill. It's easier to put the bill on one card and then pass cash between us.

I'm not sure how secure paying by phone is at the moment. I think the idea is partly that you don't have to hand over your credit card to someone who can easily record the number. The actual data transfer is likely secure, though also likely that someone can figure out a way to break the security. I would think it would be secure for the most part though.

When I first heard about Google Wallet I thought is it really any easier to take your phone out than a card. It really isn't and I'm still going to have to carry a real wallet for other things. At the same time I can see how paying via software on a phone can be nice. Ideally there's a digital record of your receipts and ideally it will prove to be more secure. There are probably ways to build in more value like maybe coupons are automatically applied or rebates or similar.

Regardless I'm pretty sure this is the direction we're heading.