A demonstration of the Isis Mobile Wallet app running on an Android smartphone from HTC. Photo: Isis
The mobile-payment system Isis, an aspiring rival to Google Wallet, has a launch date once again, and it’s coming up quick — Monday, Oct. 22.
Back in May, the plan was for Isis — a joint venture between Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile — to launch during the summer. But in September, things were officially put on hold. As has always been the plan, though, Isis’ initial rollout will be limited to a few hundred retailers in Salt Lake City and Austin.
Major retail chains such as 7-Eleven, Foot Locker, McDonald’s, Macy’s, The Home Depot, Jamba Juice and Coca-Cola (for use in its vending machines) have all said they will accept Isis payments, but its unclear whether or not they’ll be part of the launch. American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa have all announced that they’ll accept payments made through Isis.
On Monday, the Isis Mobile Wallet app landed in Google Play, but so far, we’ve yet to find a phone that it’s compatible with. Isis isn’t yet saying what phones the Isis app will work with but did say that it will offer more specifics when things formally kick off next week.
“By year end, as many as 20 Isis-ready handsets are expected to be in market,” Isis marketing head Jaymee Johnson told Wired. “We look forward to sharing more details on Oct. 22.”
After Salt Lake City and Austin, Isis intends to expand to other major U.S. cities. Again, though, there are no details. So some people in Salt Lake City and Austin will be able to try out Isis on Oct. 22, but we don’t know on which handsets they’ll be able to use it or at which business they’ll be able to try it out.
Isis will work largely the same way as Google Wallet, using an app to store a user’s credit or debit card data, or a pre-loaded amount of money, on a near field communication (NFC) chip found in many newer Android smartphones. At participating retailers, consumers will be able to make purchases by waving or tapping their smartphones on NFC-compatible checkout scanners.
While Isis, which was founded in 2010, is about to launch, Google Wallet is up and running in more than 100,000 stores, with some of the same major retail partners that Isis has signed up, including Coca-Cola, Footlocker, Jamba Juice and Macy’s.
Despite Google’s massive head start, using your phone as a digital wallet is still full of pitfalls. For the last month, Wired reporter Christina Bonnington has actually been using only smartphones to make purchases, leaving her wallet at home in a quest to find out just how feasible Google Wallet, Square, LevelUp, PayPal and other options are in the real world.
From Bonnington’s experiment so far, it’s clear that this mobile payments battle is just getting started, and there’s no solid leader as of yet. So while Isis won’t change the way you pay anytime soon, it’s got plenty of time to establish a presence in this nascent space.
Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/isis-sets-oct-22-launch-date/
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