ISIS, the telecom consortium intent on offering a mobile payment scheme, is building out a wider range of mobile wallet capabilities to keep up with its aggressive rival, Google.
By licensing a software development kit from mobile application provider C-SAM's, ISIS—which consists of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile—hopes to build out added payments, rewards, coupons, ticket, transit and other mobile payments services that can be offered by current and future participants in the consortium.
The deal with C-SAM allows ISIS to "build a secure transaction ecosystem and offer consumers a comprehensive mobile wallet for conducting payments, redeeming offers and storing loyalty cards," says Jayme Johnson, head of marketing for ISIS.
Time is of the essence, since competitors such as Google Wallet are also moving quickly to tap NFC to build a mobile payments ecosystem. Google, whose partners include MasterCard, Sprint and Citigroup, is testing mobile payments this summer in San Francisco and New York. ISIS is also plotting its debut in Salt Lake City and Austin transit systems in a few months.
"ISIS needs mobile wallet software that manages how things happen within the wallet, how different parts can be loaded, and how consumers choose which card to use for payments," says Zil Bareisis, a senior analyst for Celent, who notes Google has entered into a deal in which First Data will power parts of its Google Wallet through First Data's Trusted Service Manager technology [Google also enhanced its mobile payments capabilities by
ISIS hopes the C-SAM deal will allow it to scale quickly. C-SAM, which provides coverage across a number of carrier networks, operating systems and NFC handsets, bundles more than two dozen payment services within its software development kit, such as coupons, parking, healthcare, etc.
In a statement to BTN, C-SAM said its "platform and development work with ISIS will allow the ISIS wallet to be deployed across a full range of handsets, will enable and power a broad range of mobile commerce use cases and value added services, and will support the full range of security and risk management protocols of ISIS' other partners and back end providers."
After initially positioning itself as a competitor to card networks, ISIS recently opened its model to the networks, and has inked deals with Visa, MasterCard and American Express. ISIS hopes consumers will pay via NFC phones, which will be waved near terminals, transferring payment information and other data, which could presumably be used for loyalty programs, coupons or targeted marketing.
ISIS and Google still face tech challenges, particularly in attracting wide participation of card issuing banks as part of their respective payments network.
"We've seen this with bill pay and PFM. I believe for any solution to work, it's going to have to be integrated with mobile banking offerings," says Brad Strothkamp, a vp and principal analyst for Forrester Research, who says maintaining separate apps and authentication for mobile payments and mobile banking is a hindrance to consumer adoption. "Mobile banking is one of the main apps that you'll have on your phone. Why would you not want [payments] to be a part of mobile banking?"
