wallet

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET and elsewhere for Monday, September 19.

• Google Wallet launches today, but you probably can't use it yet. The digital wallet is available for the Samsung Nexus S on the Sprint Nextel network. The wallet uses near-field communication to allow you to pay with your mobile phone. "In the future, our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional … Read more

Just in time for Google Wallet's official launch, Samsung has prepped an update for the Nexus S 4G so you will soon be able to use the smartphone to pay for items at participating stores.

The Samsung Nexus S 4G for Sprint is currently the only handset to support Google Wallet and features an embedded NFC chip that allows you to pay simply by tapping or swiping your phone. Samsung has provided a few details about the update on its FAQ site, but it didn't provide any details as to when the software would be pushed out to … Read more

Google Wallet, which will allow people to tap or swipe their phones to pay for things, officially launches today on its first smartphone, the Samsung Nexus S offered on Sprint Nextel.

While several other companies, including credit card giants Visa and American Express, as well as mobile wireless carriers, have also announced plans to launch their own digital wallets, Google is the first to take its digital wallet to market.

Citibank, MasterCard, and Sprint are the initial launch partners for the service. What this means for users is that, initially, virtually the only credit cards that will work with Google Wallet are Citibank MasterCards. Google is also offering a Google Prepaid MasterCard as well, a workaround for people who may not have a Citibank MasterCard. People who want to use this card can preload money from other credit cards onto the Google prepaid card. And then they can make purchases using the phone.

Sprint is the first official carrier partner since it is the carrier offering the Nexus S 4G. But as other Android smartphones equipped with NFC (near-field communications) technology come on the market, other devices on other carriers will eventually be able to use the service too.

Google also said today that it has licensed NFC technology from other major credit card companies: American Express, Visa, and Discover. This means that upcoming versions of Google Wallet will support those credit cards as well.

"In the future, our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets," said Osama Bedier, vice president of payments at Google.… Read more

Watch our for a falling satellite on Friday, AT&T launches its 4G LTE network in five markets, and Netflix splits itself into a streaming video company with the same name and a DVD-by-mail service called Qwikster.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

The pieces appear to be falling into place for the launch of Google Wallet today.

Last night, social-media blog TechCrunch posted an image purporting to be from Google Wallet partners, showing documentation on the service. That documentation says that "Google Wallet is launching September 19, 2011."

Then this morning, another blog, GigaOm, posted an image, taken by one of its reporters at a coffee shop in San Francisco, of a Google Wallet payment reader. The reader provides directions on it, saying users must "tap" their smartphone against the device in order to "pay by smartphone.&… Read more

I've never seen the point of a wallet.

It's always struck me that if you lose it, you lose everything. If you just keep your stuff in your pocket (and, really, how much stuff do you need?), you're at best likely to lose one or two things, rather than everything. In any case, all wallets are flamingly ugly, the ultimate in afterthought design.

Google also hates wallets. Indeed, it wants you to make all of your payments through a cell phone.

To fool you into thinking you still have a wallet, its as yet unlaunched service is … Read more

NEW YORK--It's been a long time coming, but the mobile-payment revolution may finally be here.

MasterCard, one of the major credit card issuers eyeing the market for years, is set to launch its service in the U.S. with partner Google. The company is the exclusive credit card issuer for the launch of Google Wallet, a digital-wallet application for Google Android phones.

Google Wallet lets people store credit card information, gift cards, and loyalty cards in a digital format on their phones. And using short range wireless technology known as near field communications, or NFC, it allows people to … Read more

Pulling my dot-matrix Mighty Wallet out of my pocket, I might look like I'm living life with dollar bills stuck into an old piece of '80s printer paper. I like that. I just hope no one throws it out.

Searching for a backup wallet to replace one from a vacation I just took, I wandered down to Urban Outfitters and found this enticingly ridiculous, and ugly, dot-matrix wallet. It's a design only a geek could love. The green-and-white paper complete with tractor holes looks picture-perfect, only this wallet's not made of standard paper. Mighty Wallets are made of Tyvek, that same tear- and water-resistant material that's used in mailing envelopes and water-park wristbands. They've been around since 2005, but this is the first time I'd ever seen one.… Read more

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T- Mobile USA plan to invest an additional $100 million into their mobile payment joint venture, Isis, to help get the project off the ground more quickly, Bloomberg reported Monday.

According to Bloomberg's unnamed sources familiar with the joint venture, the investment is contingent on whether Isis, which was developed to turn cell phones into payment devices, could sign up additional banks and merchants.

A spokesman for Isis declined to comment on the rumors.

The joint venture, formed in November, has been somewhat slow to get off the ground. But the additional funding … Read more