14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, Google Wallet went live for everyone, everyone with a Sprint Nexus S 4G anyway, enabling users to pay for anything, at stores that can accept NFC payments, with their phones.
Google unveiled Wallet earlier this year and, true to its name, it promised it would eventually replace your real wallet. It's not quite there yet.
For now, it only works on one phone, the Sprint version of the Nexus S and with only one card, the Citi MasterCard. This greatly limits the potential number of users at this point. Needless to say, all of this is only available in the US.
If you don't have a Citi MasterCard, you can use a Google pre-paid card which you can feed from any of your existing cards.
But that's only half of the problem, even if you meet all of the requirements and are able to install the Google Wallet app, your next challenge will be to find a store that can accept payments via NFC.
Thankfully, you'll be able to use Wallet at any store that supports MasterCard PayPass, about 150,000 locations in the US, Google says. It's not everywhere, but you'll probably find some places nearby, especially in big cities.
Google Wallet is about the future
But this is the present, Google Wallet is about the future. The near future holds greater availability for the app and payments partners.
Google is already working with Visa, Discover and American Express to add support for those cards in future Wallet versions. The company also plans to make the app available on more phones as soon as more start incorporating an NFC chip.
These steps will happen in the next few months, by early next year, you should be able to use almost any card you have and a number of phones with Wallet.
But even with that, Google Wallet will still be in its infancy since the company has very ambitious goals for the technology. It's starting out as a payments method, a convenient and fast one, but that's just one part of Wallet.
Like your wallet doesn't just hold your credit cards, so will Google Wallet hold IDs, coupons, loyalty cards, tickets, keys and so on. Everything that fits into your wallet will be built into Google Wallet and much more.
The goal is to make the smartphone (with Google Wallet) the only thing you need to take with you anywhere. And if Google is not going to do it, someone else will.