Google Wallet Finally Comes to the iPhone (With a Big Asterisk)

Google Wallet for Apple’s iPhone is finally here, Google announced today, and it has a lot in common with the new Android version that launched earlier this week.

It allows users to transfer money to friends, store all of their loyalty cards and clip and save discount offers.

But the one capability that Google Wallet got a lot of attention for early on isn’t making its way to the iPhone app: Making a payment in-store with a tap of the phone. Those payments happen through Near Field Communication technology, which Apple has long resisted adding to its iPhone.

In an interview with AllThingsD last year, Apple SVP Phil Schiller said he wasn’t convinced that NFC solved any real problems for shoppers. A common sentiment in the payments industry is that paying today with a credit card or cash in-store is just not difficult, making mobile payments a tough sell to most shoppers and merchants.

“Passbook does the kinds of things customers need today,” Schiller said at the time; Passbook is Apple’s digital wallet-like app.

Speaking of which, it will be interesting to see what impact Google Wallet’s arrival on iOS has on future Passbook adoption.