Around this time last year three of America’s four largest wireless operators announced a bold plan to create a separate company that’d they would all have a stake in which would be responsible for advancing the state of mobile payments. They called the company ISIS. We don’t really know a lot about ISIS, except that trials are due to kick off next summer in Salt Lake City, Utah and Austin, Texas. If you’re wondering which of the top four didn’t sign up, it’s Sprint. They decided to partner with Google and their Android only Google Wallet solution, which again we know little about, except that today it only works on Sprint, on just one device, and with one bank. Sweden’s wireless companies looked at ISIS and essentially cloned the idea. Telia, Tele2, Telenor, and 3 have joined forces to form a joint venture that they’ve yet to name, and they’re currently searching for a CEO as well. The plan is to reveal more information in early 2012, launch the service during the summer, and have it support not only mobile payments, but Sweden’s public transportation infrastructure as well.
The bigger question here, assuming both ISIS and the Swedish equivalent works, is will operators cooperating with each other at this sort of scale be enough to compete with the likes of Google and Apple? We’ve yet to see Google Wallet deployed in enough devices to care, and Apple’s mobile payment solution is just a rumor at this point, but where operators have an advantage is their knowledge of the local market conditions, plus the existing relationships they have with local small businesses, customers, and possibly even the banks, which they rely on for money to finance network maintenance and expansion.
Whoever solves the mobile payments, we don’t really care. As long as it’s easy, safe, and convenient. And it doesn’t even have to be a winner takes all approach either. Just like there exist multiple banks, we imagine they’ll be a huge variety of mobile payment providers in the future.
Now we just need the future to get here faster.
Update: For our readers in Finland, we contacted Elisa asking them what they thing of this announcement and whether a similar concept will launch in the land of a thousand lakes. Three days later, no reply.
[Via: NFC World]
[Additional Reading: Telia’s website and Tele2’s website, both in Swedish.