Google Wallet simplifies online payments

Using the Google Wallet application to make in-store purchases on a smartphone is yet to catch on but using it to make online shopping easier for mobile device users could be the key to its widespread adoption.

Using smartphones and tablets for online shopping is a frustrating experience for many consumers. In fact the latest figures from SeeWhy and reports from Gartner estimate that up to 97 percent of mobile shoppers give up on online purchases because sites are not optimized for smartphones and the amount of information customers need to provide is easier to enter on a full-sized computer keyboard rather than via a touchscreen.
Google Wallet aims to alleviate this pain by simplifying the process down to three steps from upwards of 17 information fields. As the application already holds billing address details and credit and debit card numbers, when Google Wallet users visit a site that supports the technology, they can click on the ‘Pay with Google Wallet' button.
This will launch the Google Wallet application and allow users to select which card they want to use and which address the purchase should be dispatched to.
The new feature, officially announced on Thursday, is currently only supported by US-based e-commerce sites 1-800-Flowers, Rockport.com and FiveGuys.com, but Google promises that more sites are in the process of adopting the feature.
Initially conceived as a replacement for credit and debit cards and as a system for ushering in the age of mobile payments and Near Field Communication, Google Wallet has so far failed to make a huge impact. This is due in part to the fact that there are currently fewer than 70 smartphone models on the market around the world that support near field communication (NFC, the technology that allows smartphone users to tap their handsets on a payment terminal rather than swipe a card to make a payment) and because merchants have been very slow to invest in the technology needed to accept point of sales payments via smartphone.
Over recent months, Google has been adding additional features to the service such as web-based micropayments, so that people whose phones do not support NFC can still use it. By turning Google Wallet into a secure and simple means of shopping online with a mobile device, Google may have just found a way of bringing the service into the mainstream.

 Source: ph.news.yahoo.com by AFP Relax on Sat, Nov. 3, 2012