Scott Esdaile

With Google’s announcement of their game-changing Google Wallet two weeks back, I watched Apple’s announcements yesterday with interest to see how they’d reply to the challenge – potentially by unveiling an iPhone 5 with near field communcation (NFC) technology built in to allow mobile payments. It didn’t happen. Maybe next time. So back to Google Wallet…

For those that haven’t read much into it yet, Google Wallet is basically a phone app that stores virtual versions of the plastic cards (including loyalty and credit cards) that you have in your wallet, combined with the ‘tap to pay’ functionality that’s started to be implemented at checkouts, and the benefits of location-driven retail offers. It’s going to be rad.

From Google’s vision: This is just the beginning, but we believe that, in time, your phone with Google Wallet will be the one thing that holds everything you need to carry.

Everything? Sure, combined with remote-unlocking apps that have started to appear, it really does negate the three-point ‘keys, wallet, phone’ check. But is that everything? Maybe it is. Add a few tunes, a few e-books, some games, nifty cameras, maps and throw in a few cloud-based features… seems our phones really will be the only things we need with us soon.

Which means it’s going to really, really, really suck if you lose it in the back of a cab on a night out. Effectively losing what in the past would have been a whole handbag (or manbag) full of personal items.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the convergence of devices. And anything that helps stop my jeans from falling down from having too much stuff jammed into my pockets is surely a win for everyone.

But let’s take it even further. What’s missing? What would you like to see added to your phone to truly make it the one thing you ever needed to carry?

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}