Google Offers beta starts in Portland, Oregon tomorrow

(Cross-posted on the Places, Retail, Small Business, and Official Google Blogs)

Portlanders know how to mix the urban (killer coffee, music and art) and the small-town (easy walking, biking and socializing). There’s no end to the city’s great restaurants, coffee shops, hot spots and places to explore. That’s why, when we started planning the Google Offers beta, we knew Portland was the ideal place to get it all kicked off.

Today, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius announced at the D9 Conference that we’re launching Google Offers beta in Portland, Ore. tomorrow.

Our first Google Offer will be from beloved local java shop Floyd’s Coffee. Husband-and-wife team Jack Inglis and Cris Chapman opened Floyd’s seven years ago, offering up espresso, coffee, breakfast burritos and more. They now have two convenient locations—one cozy, brick-lined shop in Old Town and another Stumptown watering-hole in Buckman.

With Google Offers, we’re working with great local businesses like Floyd’s Coffee, Le Bistro Montage, Powell’s Books and Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade to help them reach more Portlanders. We hope to bring Google Offers to other cities soon, with New York City and the San Francisco Bay area as our next stops.

You can learn more about Google Offers and sign up at google.com/offers. If you’re a business interested in participating in Google Offers, you can let us know too. Finally, if you’re at the Portland Rose Festival this Saturday, visit our Google booth at CityFair to say hello to our team and learn more about Google Offers.

Posted by Kyle Harrison, Product Manager, Google Offers

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Coming soon: make your phone your wallet

(cross-posted to Official Google Blog and Google Mobile Blog)



Today in our New York City office, along with Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint, we gave a demo of Google Wallet, an app that will make your phone your wallet. You’ll be able to tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC). We’re field testing Google Wallet now and plan to release it soon.

Google Wallet is a key part of our ongoing effort to improve shopping for both businesses and consumers. It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want, while giving merchants more ways to offer coupons and loyalty programs to customers, as well as bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.

Because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will do more than a regular wallet ever could. You'll be able to store your credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards, but without the bulk. When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you. Someday, even things like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys could be stored in Google Wallet.

At first, Google Wallet will support both Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card, which you’ll be able to fund with almost any payment card. From the outset, you’ll be able to tap your phone to pay wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted. Google Wallet will also sync your Google Offers, which you’ll be able to redeem via NFC at participating SingleTap™ merchants, or by showing the barcode as you check out. Many merchants are working to integrate their offers and loyalty programs with Google Wallet.

With Google Wallet, we’re building an open commerce ecosystem, and we’re planning to develop APIs that will enable integration with numerous partners. In the beginning, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint. Over time, we plan on expanding support to more phones.

To learn more please visit our Google Wallet website at www.google.com/wallet.

This is just the start of what has already been a great adventure towards the future of mobile shopping. We’re incredibly excited and hope you are, too.

Posted by Rob von Behren and Jonathan Wall, Founding Engineers on Google Wallet

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Shopping, saving and sharing on the Google Commerce Blog

Today we’re launching the Google Commerce Blog to bring you news, trends and ideas about shopping, retailing and payments from across Google and beyond.

Google commerce products help buyers easily find the things they're looking for no matter where they are. They also help retailers attract and retain customers. For example, retailers can list their items for free in Google Product Search and reach buyers right when they’re searching for that product. Google Shopper, Google Maps, Google Places and Boutiques.com aim to make savvy shopping easier and faster. And with Google Checkout, you can buy online quickly, safely and conveniently.

Commerce isn’t just about physical goods. Content providers like newspaper, book and magazine publishers and game developers can also sell their digital wares with a single sign-on using Google One Pass, In-App Payments or Google eBooks. Readers and players can access their paid content from any device, on the desktop, tablet, or mobile phones because it is stored in the cloud.

To share updates about these products and more, and to help developers better monetize their businesses, we recently hosted the first Commerce track at Google I/O featuring sessions from five commerce product areas. We want to keep that conversation going, and give you a window into what's new year-round.

Follow this blog for ways to make shopping, buying and selling in-the-cloud and on-the-go better.

Posted by Stephanie Tilenius, Vice President of Commerce

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