Google introduced its mobile wallet platform Thursday that allows users to pay for goods in retail stores by waving their phone near a terminal, reported the dpa. The system will officially launch in August through the company's best-selling Android smartphones, but users in San Francisco and New York will be able to start using the platform sooner in widespread public trials. The programme utilizes a near field communications (NFC) chip that is currently available only in Google's Nexus S phone, but which is expected to quickly become standard issue in all Android smartphones later this year. NFC chips allow the transmission of small amounts of data such as credit card and coupon information between two devices over small distances. Google is hoping that Thursday's launch will give it a head start in the race to dominate mobile payments, a sector that is expected to grow to 245 billion dollars by 2014.
