ISIS consortium delays launch of NFC-based mobile payments in Salt Lake City and Austin

13.09.2012
ISIS, a consortium of three wireless carriers, said Thursday that it will not launch its Near-Field Communication-based mobile payment service in Salt Lake City or Austin, Texas by the end of the summer as earlier planned.

"We are still wrapping things up..., working on a few final items," Jaymee Johnson, head of marketing for ISIS, said in a telephone interview. Summer ends this year on Sept. 22, and ISIS is not going to meet its goal to come to market in both cities, he said.

ISIS plans to provide an update in early October on the date of its launch, Johnson said. The three carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA -- are still completely committed to the project, as are banks and other partners, he said.

"There's no implications of problems with partner support or the ecosystem, and we continue to meet on a regular basis," Johnson said. "We have overwhelming support by the ecosystem, banks, and providers of points-of-sale terminals. Support could not be stronger."

ISIS will rely on NFC chips inside smartphones to allow users to make payments by transferring funds stored on digital credit cards on their phones via a touch or near-touch over a wireless network to an NFC receiving terminal. Google Wallet, available for about a year, uses similar technology.

Despite anticipation that Apple might launch its iPhone 5 on Wednesday with NFC, it did not; instead, it showed its Passbook mobile payment software working over traditional barcode scanning technology to transfer data.