Isis welcomes more partners, denies ‘scaling back’
Isis, the mobile payments venture by Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile, is not “scaling back” efforts to launch its own payments platform in favor of a simpler mobile wallet service, contrary to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
According to Mobile Commerce Daily, Isis will continue as planned to develop its own mobile commerce network supported by NFC-enabled payments and a mobile wallet. However, the company says it is looking to partner with more payment networks and issuers in order to get the service to market faster and at a greater scale.
“We took the initial strategy of fewer partners to see if we can bring those forces into alignment,” Isis spokesman Jaymee Johnson told MCD. “And last year in November, when Mike Abbott came on as CEO, there were some profound changes in regulation around how payments are priced to a consumer. But, more importantly, as we spoke to the merchant community, banks and payment networks, there was a lot of interest in working with Isis. So now, our initial strategy with working with fewer has accelerated to working with more.”
“The bottom line is Isis is now open to more partners to build the m-payments industry and is igniting a one ecosystem factor,” Johnson stated, adding that Isis is not prepared to reveal the names of any new partners just yet.
Isis will still make its debut in Salt Lake City next year as part of a transit payment pilot.
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