Google to test mobile pay service

New York: Google plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, two people familiar with the project said.

The company will pay for installation of thousands of special cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems at merchant locations, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because Google’s plans haven’t been made public.

The registers would accept payments from mobile phones equipped with so-called near-field-communication technology.

The project would put Google in a growing field of companies experimenting with NFC, which lets consumers pay for products and services by tapping a device against a register at checkout, giving them an alternative to cash or physical credit cards.

The Google service may combine a consumer’s financial account information, gift-card balances, store loyalty cards and coupon subscriptions on a single NFC chip on a phone.