Google Teams Up with Mastercard and Citigroup

This new coalition is Google's latest strategic approach to local advertising by implementing Near-Field Communication technology to develop further its mobile payment on Android phones. NFC will be available on the latest Android 2.3, which enable users to make contact-less payment by just waving their phone in front of an electronic reader. Citygroup's consumers will be the first to utilise this with a mobile payment app. This latest alliance is none other than another one of Google is strategy to battle its numerous competitors in various market. With this partnership, Google aim to boost its local advertising to overtake companies such as Groupon, Facebook and Yelp, which are currently just some of the leading companies within the local advertising market. The Wall Street Journal reports that with this technology Google will be able to "offer retailers more data about their customers and help them target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores".  The android payment will also take conversion to the next level by allowing Google to demonstrate when an ad targeted to a demographic directly results into a store purchase, which will also allow Google "to gain insight into consumer-spending behavior". Google plans on release the technology soon as Apple is expected to implement the NFC technology in the new iPhone 5, which is predicted to come out later this year.