Google Unveils App for Paying With Phone

On Thursday, the technology giant introduced Google Wallet, a mobile application that will allow consumers to wave their cellphones at a retailer’s terminal to make a payment instead of using a credit card. The app, for the Android operating system, will also enable users to redeem special coupons and earn loyalty points.

Starting this summer, the wallet will be available on the Nexus S 4G phone on Sprint and able to hold certain MasterCards issued by Citibank. It will also hold a virtual Google Prepaid MasterCard.

The mobile wallet will work at any of the 124,000 merchants that accept MasterCard’s PayPass terminals, which take contactless payments, and more than 300,000 merchants outside the United States. The wallet is powered by a technology called near-field communications, which is incorporated into a chip in mobile phones and sends a message to the merchants’ terminals.

“Eventually, you will be able to put everything in your wallet,” Stephanie Tilenius, vice president for commerce at Google, said at a news conference.

That grand vision will take a while to come to fruition. Various players have been working on mobile wallets for years, but they have not gained traction because the companies have not been able to agree on how they would be paid or who would control the wallets. Cellular carriers, banks, credit card issuers, payment networks and technology companies all have a stake in this battle.

With its wallet, Google plans to make money by offering consumers promotions as they shop. For instance, it plans to introduce “Google Offers” — advertising deals from local and online businesses that can be found online or sent through the phone. Like Groupon, Google will collect a fee from participating retailers every time a person redeems a coupon. Citibank will collect the same fees as it would in a traditional credit card transaction.

Google Wallet will need some time to become fully functional nationwide. While Google has worked with more than 15 retailers, like American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdale’s, the Container Store and Jamba Juice, they all need to upgrade their payment terminals. When they do, consumers will also be able to store and redeem deals with the wallet. Merchants in New York and San Francisco are expected to be ready this summer.

Once the retailers’ technology is in place, consumers will be able to wave their phone at the checkout counter and, in one swoop, discounts will be applied, loyalty points will be awarded and payments made. Someday, Google said, when consumers enter the store, their phones may serve up a list of items they recently bought, and offer them related discounts.

The wallet app itself will require a PIN, as will each transaction. The payment credentials will be encrypted and stored on a chip inside the phone.

Google emphasized that the wallet would be open to all businesses and invited other banks, credit card issuers, payment networks, mobile carriers and merchants to work with it.

“I expect that other payment networks and other banks will join this effort, though in some cases it will be a hedge strategy they employ along with their own mobile payment initiatives,” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Since these payments utilize the same underlying business model as cards today, there is not significant disruption risk for these players.”

Google is also working with First Data, which processes payments and will ensure the security of the transaction.

If the phone was stolen, the credit cards inside could be remotely disabled. Consumers would have the same “zero liability” for unauthorized transactions made with their phones as they would with plastic cards.

Separately, PayPal filed a suit on Thursday against Google and two of its former executives who are now at Google, including Ms. Tilenius. The suit claims that they misappropriated trade secrets from PayPal’s mobile-payment business. A Google spokesman declined to comment because he said they have not yet received a copy of the complaint.

Eventually, Google said, its wallet may be able to hold much more, including car keys and airline boarding passes. But access to such items will still require a fully charged phone.

If the phone battery dies, even Ms. Tilenius of Google conceded, “I think you need to use your plastic at that point.”

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Angry Parents in Japan Confront Government Over Radiation Levels

“Do you really care about our children’s health?” one parent shouted. “Why have you acted so late?” said another. Among other concerns: isn’t radiation still raining down on Fukushima? Shouldn’t the entire school building be decontaminated? The entire city? Can we trust you?

“We are doing all we can,” pleaded Tomio Watanabe, a senior official of Fukushima’s education board.

A huge outcry is erupting in Fukushima over what parents say is a blatant government failure to protect their children from dangerous levels of radiation. The issue has prompted unusually direct confrontations in this conflict-averse society, and has quickly become a focal point for anger over Japan’s handling of the accident at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, ravaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

At issue are updated government guidelines that allow schoolchildren to be exposed to radiation doses that are more than 20 times the previously permissible levels. That dose is equal to the international standard for adult nuclear power plant workers.

Adding to the anxiety, there is little scientific knowledge of the sorts of radiation dangers that Japan may now be facing. Scientists say readings in most areas are too low to cause immediate illness — even among children, who are more vulnerable — but they have a limited understanding of how low radiation doses over a long period of time can affect health.

“People in Japan want a simple answer: Is it safe or is it dangerous?” said Kuniko Tanioka, a member of Parliament’s upper house, on a recent visit to Washington. But given the state of radiation science, “there is no such thing” as a simple answer, Ms. Tanioka said.

For two months, the children at the Soramame Children’s House, a day care center about 37 miles from the stricken plant, spent their days indoors, windows sealed shut to keep out radiation, their favorite buckets and spades contaminated and strictly off limits.

But when the local authorities made no effort to decontaminate the area, caregivers took matters into their own hands. On the advice of local environmental groups — they said local officials had none to give — a group of parents and teachers donned makeshift protective suits and masks, took up spades and disposed of the playground’s topsoil.

After the topsoil removal, radioactive materials, which tend to be deposited in the soil, fell from about 30 times the levels naturally found in the environment to twice those levels.

“It breaks my heart that they did nothing for the children,” said Sadako Monma, herself a mother of two, who has run the Soramame center for 15 years. “Our answer was to stop waiting for someone to help us.”

On Monday, a group of angry parents from Fukushima staged a rowdy protest outside Japan’s Education Ministry in Tokyo, bearing signs reading “Save our children” and demanding to speak with the minister. They were rebuffed.

Yoshiaki Takaki, the education minister, later stressed that the government would allow children to remain exposed to the updated levels of radiation.

“We will endeavor to bring radiation levels down,” Mr. Takaki told reporters on Tuesday.

Slow action by the government has set off a revolt among the usually orderly ranks of Japanese bureaucrats.

Some smaller towns and cities in Fukushima Prefecture have spurned orders from Tokyo, declaring their schools unsafe and sending in bulldozers to remove contaminated soil from the school grounds. A handful of individual children’s facilities, like Soramame, have done the same. In April, an adviser to Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigned over the new radiation guidelines, saying he would not let his own children be exposed to those levels.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.

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