Google And Square Square Off

Now I know why Jack Dorsey, in his Square CEO incarnation, was dismissing wireless payment systems that force users to ‘wave their cell phones near registers’ when he was announcing the Square payment system at Techcrunch Disrupt yesterday: Google is about to release such a payment system this week.

Tara Siegel Bernard and Claire Cain Miller, Google Is Said to Have a Wireless Payment System

Google is expected to introduce on Thursday a mobile payment system that will let shoppers wave their phones to pay instead of pulling out a credit card, according to people briefed on the announcement. 

Google will offer mobile payments with MasterCard and Citibank, according to one of the people, as well as with cellphone carriers, hardware manufacturers and retailers. 

Initially, the mobile wallets will be available only on Google’s Nexus S phone and will use a Citibank-issued MasterCard credit card number and a virtual Google MasterCard prepaid card. Consumers will be able to make payments at any of the 124,000 merchants that have MasterCard’s PayPass terminals, which accept contactless payments, a person briefed on the deal said.

I am a believer in near-field communication, and skeptical about Square’s Card Case model, which seems to  require a bigger commitment by retailers than Google’s model, which only requires NFC to be added to registers.

Still these are early days. I don’t think Square can beat Google, but I sense that Square is a likely candidate for acquisition by Apple, and then Dorsey would be able to apply his considerable energies to Twitter, exclusively.