Google is ramping up the promotion of its Google Wallet, announcing that eight retail chains accept both payments and coupons or rewards with a single tap of their Nexus S 4G NFC phones.
The eight chains, which include, clothing retailer American Eagle Outfitters, department store Macy’s, toy merchant Toys“R”Us and smoothie drink purveyor Jamba Juice, accept the payment and coupons or loyalty points together only in some of their locations.
These SingleTap locations total about 1,500 outlets, a Google spokesman told NFC Times. All or nearly all are in five cities where Google is marketing the wallet: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
How is this SingleTap when you tap your phone once to pay, then wait for the app to open, enter the PIN and then tap again? And if you are out of Sprint coverage, you are out of luck as the wallet will not be able to authenticate you?
This is totally misleading from Google. This should be called Two Tap and Online PIN which defeats the whole purpose of NFC which is supposed to be contactless and offline (phone does not need to be connected to the network) !!