Google partners with Mastercard, Citigroup and Verifone for NFC mobile payments

SOFTWARE GIANT Google is partnering with Mastercard, Citigroup and Verifone to offer Near Field Communications (NFC) mobile payments on phones running its Android operating system.

NFC is seen by many as the future for making retail payments, replacing credit and debit cards with virtual equivalents built into smartphones. Users wave their smartphone in front of an electronic reader in a store to make a secure contactless payment for goods or services.

Mastercard and Citigroup will be the initial payment companies offering mobile payments on Android, while Verifone will be rolling out contactless NFC readers to shopkeepers interested in offering the technology. Other companies such as Visa are likely to join the partnership if it proves successful.

Google might be able to profit from this feature by introducing a new array of ads, which it can then verify are resulting in store sales or not, according to the Wall Street Journal. While this could mean more revenue for Google, some people might have privacy concerns about such an approach.

Google added NFC capability to Android in its Gingerbread 2.3.3 release. Apple is looking to add the feature into the Iphone in the near future. µ