Google Wallet officially launched

Great news! After months of waiting, Google Wallet, that was introduced back in May, will finally go live starting today. Google has announced that it’s been testing the service extensively since the announcement, and it’s now ready for the public to use. Google Wallet will be available on all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones through an over-the-air update. At the moment, it will only work with Citi MasterCard credit cards and the Google Prepaid Card. For early adopters, Google will be giving a free $10 to anybody who uses the Google Prepaid Card in Google Wallet before the end of the year.

Other cards such as Visa, Discover and American Express will be added in future versions of Google Wallet (no word on when that will be) but for now users are just limited to Citi MasterCard. There wasn’t any mention about the NFC stickers that were supposed to be released for non-NFC phones, so it looks like Google Wallet users will be limited to Citi MasterCard credit card holders who own a Nexus S 4G phone on Sprint. Not a great way to launch, but let’s hope it doesn’t take too long to improve. Watch a video introduction to Google Wallet:

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Google, google wallet, nexus s 4g, NFC, Sprint