A mobile phone running Google Inc.'s Android software has the hardware groundwork for mobile payments.
On Monday, Google announced the Nexus S, a phone built by Samsung Electronics Ltd. that has a built-in near-field communication chip.
Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and chief executive officer, had earlier disclosed that an upcoming version of its Android software would support this technology, which many in the financial services space envision as an essential component of turning mobile phones into payment devices. "The theory, or the case, is that you'll be able to … eventually replace, literally, credit cards" with an NFC phone, Schmidt said at a conference in November.
It is unclear as to whether the Nexus S will immediately be able to make payments. In Schmidt's demonstration of NFC, and in a description of the technology on Google's website, the chip was shown to be able to read information wirelessly from posters.
Simon Wilson, an engineer with Google, said in a video on Google's website that the NFC technology in the Nexus S is read-only.
"Currently, your Nexus S can only read information from other objects," Wilson said. "Information from your Nexus S cannot be read by other devices or objects."
Wilson also stressed that the NFC chip can be turned off entirely.
