NEW YORK — Tech juggernaut Google rolled out its highly anticipated mobile-payments system on Thursday, with company officials unabashedly declaring the advent of “a new era of commerce.” Dubbed Google Wallet, the new product launched with a closely related initiative: Google Offers, a targeted daily-deal service that will compete with the first-movers Groupon and LivingSocial.

Google’s move instantly accelerates the booming point-of-sale digital payments arms race, and represents the most comprehensive and ambitious foray into mobile payments by any of the large players jockeying for position in the nascent but already-booming arena that Google says it believes will quadruple over the next four years.

“We believe the shopping space has not yet been fully transformed by technology,” Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s Vice President of Commerce, told a packed press conference at its New York City headquarters.

Although Google’s digital wallet news was expected, Google Offers had not been on the press tech’s radar for today’s event. Many have taken for granted, however, that Google would build what it could not buy after Groupon reportedly spurned a $6 billion offer.

Google is pinning its hopes for a big piece of the action on a so far little-used technology, at least on these shores: near field communications (NFC), a short-range tool that operates on wireless frequencies similar to RFID chips and tags.

At launch, Google Wallet will be compatible only with the Nexus S 4G device, available on Sprint. Tilenius said Google expects to add functionality for more phones over the next several months.

Very few handset makers have announced plans to include NFC chips. It’s anybody’s guess if Apple, whose iPhone is the market leader, will do so for its next-gen version this fall, although experts believe that the company is working with the technology.

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