eWeek.com reports: "Google in March was widely reported to be working with credit card providers MasterCard and Citigroup to let consumers make purchases by waving their smartphones at point-of-sale terminals made by VeriFone Systems. The service, which is reportedly being tested in San Francisco and New York City, involves embedding chips, software and sensors based on the NFC (near-field communication) short-range wireless technology in Android mobile devices. Google declined to confirm this plan, but details have been leaking since former Google CEO Eric Schmidt waved around a Samsung Nexus S smartphone based on Google's Android 2.3 'Gingerbread' operating system last November. Gingerbread includes native support for NFC, and the Nexus S itself has an NFC controller chip from NXP Semiconductor. More Gingerbread-based phones are on the way. NFC mobile payments are big in Asia, prompting optimists to predict a multibillion-dollar market in the United States."
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