Some Tips for Staying Safe with your Digital Wallet

Mobile wallets are a hot topic right now, and the #1 question people keep asking is if they’re safe. The short answer, YES they are safe!

But how do I know that you’ll be safe? Because your credit cards are credit cards, no matter if they’re in your real wallet or your digital wallet. With MasterCard handling the transactions, you’ve got the same protections if someone gets ahold of your smartphone and starts making fraudulent purchases as you do with your ‘real’ credit card. You can report a card as being stolen the same way you do now—just because it’s stored inside a digital wallet doesn’t mean it’s any less safe! Read More

Get Rid of Your Wallet, The Future of Money is Here: Mobile Payments from Mastercard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njjREhucsLE

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend MasterCard’s Media Day event in NYC. The invitation was rather vague as to what to expect, though I did know that it concerned mobile payments. What shocked me was that this wasn’t some test demo of a future technology—MasterCard has teamed with Google’s Wallet software, Citi credit cards, and Sprint’s phone network to put together live shopping experiences that we can expect to actually be using in a few weeks. This holiday season, most of us will be pulling out wallets stuffed to the brim with receipts, coupons, wish lists and more. But if you’ve got a supported phone with NFC technology on Sprint, then you could be tapping your cell phone all over the place, making everyone else look distinctly 20th century. Read More

A Quick Look at PayPass technology & the Google Wallet: Enabling You To Use Your Mobile Phone as your Credit Card

If you’re following me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I’m all over television, radio and even the web today talking about what’s new in mobile payments. There’s so much to talk about with this new tech, which if you haven’t been keeping up is all about using your phone as a credit card, finally becoming a reality. Two  key pieces to make this happen are MasterCards PayPass technology, without this NFC infrastructure mobile payments wouldn’t be happening right now. MasterCard has over 150,000 merchants using this technology in the US & 300,000 places globally. Stores ranging from McDonalds to Macys are embracing the PayPass technology & more stores will certainly be rolling this out. The other is Google’s Wallet software, which is where you store and access your credit card information, get offers & can manage your spending limits.

Google Wallet mobile app is for right right now only on the Google Nexus S 4G phone from Sprint, but over the next few months Google will be rolling the software out to other Android smartphones (and who knows, maybe even Android tablets like the Dell Streak 7 I’m giving away over at Small Biz Go Mobile!)

Unlike other apps you might be used to, Google Wallet can only be launched with a PIN number. So pick a good one! Once inside you’ll see the different parts of Wallet — a place where you can access your credit cards or prepaid Google card, Google Offers which brings you special deals and coupons, and a place to store your rewards cards. Really, the app is replacing almost everything in your Wallet except  your drivers license! So when my Online Editor Shy wrote that it’s time to throw away your wallet, he wasn’t kidding!

Unlike your real wallet, Google’s version automatically locks itself after a period of time which you can configure. This means that nobody can use your credit card or change your settings without that PIN! so be sure to pick a good one.

Wallet was released last week, so if you’ve got a Nexus S and are on Sprint, what are you waiting for? Start using your phone as your wallet today!