Google, creator of the popular Android operating system, is looking to expand into an “ewallet” service. It makes perfect sense. You have your whole life on your phone – your contacts, e-mail, social media. You can shop and browse online with various services. There are even apps to allow you to coordinate your bills and look at your bank statements on your phone. But why not bundle more into that phone and allow you to purchase things in-store with your phone as a digital credit system? A profit can be made on these transactions, while offering the phone a competitive feature over other options.
This has the potential to greatly increase the data collected about an individual. While this data would normally be stored by a credit card or bank, this begins to aggregate personal spending habits with other information recorded through social media, e-mail or other services. Together, patterns between spending habits and common words or activities online can be worked out, with great potential for earnings through targeted advertising.
Seems as though losing your phone could be far worse than losing your wallet once was.
