Isis is the name of a brand new company funded by three of America’s four largest operators (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) that was created so mobile payments can finally take off rather than being nothing more but a pipe dream. Announced back in November 2010, we know extremely little about how they operate and what their timelines are. So far we know that Mike Abbott is the CEO, and he comes from General Electric where he was responsible for driving sales in the retail sector. Before that he was Executive Vice President of Marketing for Credit Card Services at FleetBoston where he gained experience with those little pieces of rectangular plastic inside your wallet. Today, via All Things Digital, we find out that Ryan Hughes has been appointed the Head of Marketing for Isis. Ryan comes from Verizon Wireless, where he was Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships. It’s odd then to see him shoved in a marketing role, but we don’t know what he’s fully capable of delivering.
The only additional information we have about Isis is that their goal is to launch in a few markets over the next 18 months, that they’re going to base their technology on Near Field Communication (NFC), and that Discover will be the payment processor. Now it’s just up to the market to release a slew of NFC packing devices. It started with the Nexus S, which runs Google’s latest version of the Android operating system that enabled NFC in the first place, and then by the end of the summer we should see Apple introduce the 5th generation iPhone.
For all the hype about mobile payments 2011 is going to be a year where nothing more than heavy planning will take place, and 2012 is when all the real action will finally begin. Hopefully.
[Via: NFC World]