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"Sick of having a wad of credit cards in your wallet? Sick of your wallet altogether? Google is making it possible to store all your credit card information virtually on your phone, so you won&amp;#039;t need to grab anything but your phones when you leave the house! Well, that&amp;#039;s a bit of an exaggeration. For starters, I still like the fashion statement of a purse. And until a phone can be a lip gloss and tampon dispenser, I&amp;#039;ll still be carrying around a bag. But Google will hopefully help to lighten our loads with its latest offering.   Last Thursday, Google announced the impending launch of Google Offers and Google Wallet. Google Offers is a Groupon-esque platform that will allow you to get context- and location-based discounts. (Right now it&amp;#039;s in trial and available in just a few cities.) Once you&amp;#039;re ready for a purchase, Google Wallet comes in to play. The free app will store your credit card information, reward points for stores, and the Google Offers you want to use so you can quickly and easily make a purchase without a credit card. If you&amp;#039;re familiar with PayPass or other contactless payment options offered by credit card companies, Google Wallet will work in a similar manner. Instead of tapping your PayPass-enabled card in front of a reader, you&amp;#039;ll wave your phone. The two Google applications are mutually exclusive and you don&amp;#039;t have to use both if you don&amp;#039;t want to, but I think they complement each other nicely. While Google takes us one step closer to a seamless shopping and purchase experience, the new applications are not without their limitations. The two major hurdles are that you need a special type of phone and a special type of credit card. At launch, only the Sprint Nexus S 4G will be compatible, followed by other Google Android-based phones. And the only compatible credit card company will be Citi MasterCard, although you will have the option of getting one of Google&amp;#039;s prepaid or gift cards. But even if you have the required phone and credit card, you&amp;#039;ll only be able to use the app at places that accept MasterCard PayPass. Of course it would be impossible to implement a system like this overnight that&amp;#039;s compatible in all stores, on all phones, and with all credit cards companies. But given Google&amp;#039;s ubiquitous presence, I expect it to grow quickly and make additional partnerships.   My first obvious concern was safety \u2014 and I&amp;#039;m sure that&amp;#039;s on your mind too. Google claims it&amp;#039;s using encryption technology to keep your credit card information private and requires that you input a pin number before making a purchase. While this sounds legit to me, time will tell how impenetrable it is \u2014 especially if you lose your phone. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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