ISIS, a mobile payment facility that is being developed as a joint venture between mobile carriers is all set to be launched in two markets on a trial basis in September. According to the CEO of Verifone, Doug Bergeron, the company is ready with the terminals that handle the payments and though he couldn’t reveal an exact date, he was confident that the launch would be sometime in September. He was also quite hopeful of ISIS’ future as the carriers were on its side and that it could motivate more smartphone manufacturers to bring out devices with NFC capabilities.
It is not surprising that ISIS is going to be launched in September as the company and its representatives were all very confident about getting it out to the market before September. It is currently in the final phases of testing. ISIS is run jointly by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile and the essential idea is to enable customers to pay bills, particularly in retail and departmental stores with their NFC enabled smartphones. It works with a mere tap and the technology is almost identical to what Google used in its service that was launched a year ago but received minimal appreciation.
The first market that ISIS plans to launch is in Salt Lake City, Utah and the trial markets will provide the company with the needed information to allow it to fix any bugs and glitches and ensure that the system can work. Instead of generating revenue on a per transaction basis by charging a commission, ISIS will charge for usage of its network. This is quite different from Google which charges per every transaction and even through targeted advertisements and the like.
With support from carriers and their huge networks, ISIS definitely has a headstart in the industry. The fact that Google’s service has not taken off as expected means that its model is not effective or that NFC smartphones are yet to become popular in the market. ISIS is clearly planning for the future and its charging scheme is quite superior to that of Google’s and by the time NFC becomes a regular addition to phones, it will have the advantage on its side. Carriers can also strive for more NFC enabled phones as only the newer Blackberry devices and Samsung Galaxy SIII have it right now though the new iPhone might feature it too.
