The Death of the NFC Mobile Wallet?

While mobile wallets certainly get a lot of hype, actual usage among U.S. consumers has not grown to a significant level. That's due to a number of factors -- such as giving consumers a compelling case to ditch their plastic cards -- but also because the mobile wallet space has yet to shake out a clear winner.

There are a number of different wallet providers, and, perhaps most importantly, some wallet products are NFC-based while others are cloud-based. However, could there be a tipping point in that last case? Last week, Google Wallet decided to move further away from its NFC origins as it released an updated version of the app for all Android phones version 2.3 and higher, and to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon subscribers, which will not have an NFC component. Initially, only Sprint customers could use the Google Wallet app.