Google Wallet and Google Offers launched yesterday, both of which sound supremely cool – PayPal’s grumblings (and lawsuits) about commercial espionage notwithstanding. Google Wallet lets users swipe their phones in lieu of credit cards, even allowing subscription to a new prepaid Google debit card; Google Offers looks to work like a virtual loyalty card.

It’s nice and it’s future-y; Google wants to replace your wallet with an Android phone, which is pretty cool – except it means getting your phone stolen suddenly becomes a way bigger deal, and it means you’re putting way more faith into Google’s security measures, all for the sake of looking badass and swiping your phone instead of your credit card. Not that we’ll have to worry about this for a while – Gcard is set to work in a couple of hundred thousand U.S. locations, but won’t see implementation here for a while.

Google Offers is honestly more interesting – it’s a way of carrying your various loyalty cards (your Kauai smoothie stickers or whatever) in one space, and by using check-in features (think Foursquare or Facebook Places), there’s room to take serious advantage of the technology without leaving your credit limit at risk to the badnicks of the internet. And of course we’re liable to see a fairly different way of doing business as this rolls out, assuming people get over the absence of physical transactions.

If I were you I’d wait until they start with the mandatory Google barcode tattoos, though.

[Source: Google Wallet]