Isis announces banking partners, mobile payments trial set for mid-2012

Jos

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Isis, a mobile-payments joint venture born from an alliance between Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA, announced today that it will begin trials in mid-2012 with three card services partners: Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard. The partnership was unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona alongside a first glimpse at what the interface to the Isis Mobile Wallet looks like.

Like rival service Google Wallet, Isis is counting on near field communication (NFC) to become the de facto standard for making purchases using a mobile phone. Although it has lagged behind Google in rolling out its alternative, Isis has already secured some very important partnerships, locking up deals with payment networks Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, as well as a handful of device manufacturers and now three major financial institutions.

There are still very few NFC-enabled handsets out there, and Google Wallet has already hit a couple of snags, so the fight for dominion over mobile payments is just getting started.

Isis mobile payments will only be available in its test markets at first, which includes  Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas. The national rollout isn’t expected until sometime next year.

The company says that each of the banks participating will be able to tailor their cardholder service experience within the Isis Mobile Wallet to reflect their respective brands and ensure a seamless and secure experience across physical cards and mobile platforms. Besides mobile payments, customers will also be able to store loyalty cards and special offer coupons in their Isis wallets.

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Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't understand this.

The only advantage I can see to move to paying with a cell phone would be the ability to stop carrying a wallet.

But if I drop my wallet, I don't have to worry about every Credit Card, personal ID, and Insurance information shattering while I'm traveling.

Can anyone explain to me why they're wasting their time & money on this technology.
 
Isis' announcement about its partnership with the card issuers reveals why Google is leading the digital wallet field. Well, that and the fact that Isis hasn't even launched its service yet and will not do so until July, if current schedule holds, while Google Wallet has been up and running since September of last year. Instead, Isis should be busy building relationships with its users, using the card issuers as nothing more than vendors. That is exactly what PayPal has been doing for so long now and is one of the reasons for its great success.
 
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