Technology companies have spent years trying to persuade people to put away their credit cards and pay with mobile phones instead, but consumers have mostly shrugged.

Now, with the release of Apple's Apple Pay application, the race to replace credit cards with mobile phones has turned into a brawl.

Google announced on Monday that it has cut a deal with three wireless carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon as well as their jointly-owned payments company, Softcard, to have its Google Wallet payment application preinstalled on Android phones sold by the carriers.

As part of the deal, Google said, it acquired “technology and intellectual property” from Softcard. The move will allow Google to get its Wallet app in front of a whole lot more people, but it is facing an increasingly crowded field.

Last week, Samsung acquired Loop Pay, signaling its move into mobile payments. Apple's Apple Pay, meantime, has been available for only a few months but has already signed up dozens of companies that report consumers are finally starting to warm to paying for things with their phones.

Last year, according to eMarketer, consumers in the United States spent $3.5 billion through mobile proximity payments when people use their phones to buy items at a cash register or the like. That is projected to grow many times over, to $118 billion over the next four years, eMarketer said.

New York Times