Now it looks as though carriers may have to defer to financial service companies and retailers after all.
Isis, a mobile payments platform launched in November by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, is reportedly scaling back its plans. In the original Wall Street Journal story, sources said Isis was shuttering plans to handle mobile transactions independent of financial service agencies. Instead, the WSJ reports, Isis is creating a "mobile wallet" to securely store account information of existing credit card accounts.
Originally it was reported that Isis would launch with Discovery and Barclays, but the WSJ reports that Isis is also courting Visa and Mastercard so as to not fall behind "in the race to establish a standard way for letting consumers pay for products with their cell phones," sources said. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express have all recently launched branded mobile payment channels.
The next day, Jaymee Johnson, head of marketing at Isis, confirmed with Computerworld that Isis was re-jigging its position somewhat to act as a "trusted service manager," and was open to working with all payment networks and platforms. As Computerworld notes, Isis buried this announcement in a press release dated April 4.
Bob Egan, a chief analyst at The Sepharim Group, told Computerworld that in its early months, Isis "taught the carriers" that retailers don't care to work with smaller card companies like Discover, which few retailers support.