Family Vacation Services does not charge merchants for a listing nor does it evaluate facilities before listing, said the company's president, Marvin E. Williams.

Although there is no fee for either for service providers or the customers, the idea is that the sites will eventually charge merchants for customer referrals.

Credit card companies generally charge merchants between 1 and 4.5 percent of each sale, depending on the volume of sales and the efficiency of the processing technology involved.

"If we get a million people who like this, we'll be able to charge merchants for the information we give them," he said.

Although a wallet is free for consumers, vendors charge merchants for wallets.

When Google introduced Checkout in June, it charged merchants 20 cents plus 2 percent of the purchase price for every transaction.

Credit card transactions now represent a large percentage of low value transactions on which credit card companies charge merchants.

On October 1, 2011, new rules go into effect that lower the debit card interchange fees the Visa and MasterCard networks charge merchants.

Google doesn't currently charge users or merchants for access to Wallet, and plans to make money by offering sponsored ads to their users.