Friday, a Google patent application filing named Text message payment was posted at the US Patent & Trademark Office site. The patent described how “GPay” can be used to make payment via text messages.

An example of how Gpay can be used includes mostly offline scenarios such as paying for items in vending machines or paying simple offline retailers.

Here is an image from the patent that shows a method of paying over your phone:

There is a lot of coverage on this new patent application, along with a lot of speculating as to what it might mean to the future of paying for offline items. Other coverage can be found at SEO By The Sea, TechCrunch, SEOptimise, Into Mobile and Techmeme.

Related Topics: Google: Checkout

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz