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Google Wallet: the End of Anonymous Shopping
jfruhlinger writes "Google today announced Google Wallet, an NFC-based payment system that will allow people to pay for purchases just by waving their phone across a reader. It's the beginning of a future where commercial transactions are 'frictionless' and convenient — but it's a future where every transaction can be tracked and data-mined, as Dan Tynan points out. Stores can user information about your Doritos purchases to rearrange their wares; Google could push coupons via its new Google Offers service; your health insurance company might be interested in your sodium intake."
Aside from being run by Google?
Sendou Wave Kick!!
Also, credit cards, debit cards and checks claim prior art.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
This kind of system offers significantly better security than CCs.
If the system is designed well the stores you visit will never see your financial information (and never have an opportunity to lose it). Encrypt the account information on the phone with a psuedo-random number that is generated every 60s (along the lines of SecureID), send the encrypted data to the store, the store forwards that encrypted string, along with the amount of purchase to the payment server, the server responds back with a simple 'approve/deny' response. This also applies to card skimmers, if someone skims your account details, they're valid for 60s or less.
The system can also be password protected, or even biometricly protected if you really wanted to make things easy; which is better than I've heard of CCs being able to do.