26 June, 2012
category: NFC, Smart Cards, Transit
Discovery News‘ Mark Peroraro recently took Google Wallet for a spin in the Bay Area and came away less than thrilled with the “future of mobile payments.”
Peroraro first tried the app at a San Francisco coffee shop, where he swiped his phone only to be told the reader wasn’t working. He then went on to make a purchase at CVS, where the app worked, but Peroraro noted that it would have been just as fast to use his credit card. A third and final attempt with a Sprint HTC Evo 4G LTE yielded an error message that the device had “not yet been certified.” According to Peroraro, reps from Google and Sprint explained this as a “software issue.”
While NFC may not be ready to replace credit cards at the point of sale, Peroraro sees the technology as a viable alternative to smart cards for transit networks.
While smart cards do eliminate paper tickets and tokens, their use is confined to their own particular network. NFC could break through these barriers, saving riders the trouble of having to switch transit cards, notes Peroraro.
There are several major transit networks in the U.S. working with NFC, notably New York’s MTA and New Jersey Transit, who has reported overwhelming success with Google Wallet.
Read the full story here.