Isis’ May 15 announcement of an expanded list of merchants who will participate in the soft launch this summer in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas, should clarify to the industry that the telco-led mobile-commerce platform inevitably will roll out nationally, an Isis executive tells PaymentsSource.
But time will determine whether all the key players involved have staying power, one observer notes.
Indeed, merchant participation is critical to the growth of mobile wallets and NFC adoption, Todd Ablowitz, president of Denver-based consultancy Double Diamond Group, tells PaymentsSource.
“We’re seeing the breadth and depth of merchant relationship they have, and this is very important for their initial rollout,” Ablowitz says. “The devil’s in the details: consumers have to like using it, it has to work effectively in those merchants, and those merchants have to be committed to the next step.”
Isis announced the additional participating merchants on May 15 (
The Isis wallet project created by carriers AT&T Mobility LLC, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA Inc. and supported by Capital One Financial Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Bank PLC, and American Express Co. is designed to let users pay for transactions with Near Field Communication-enabled smartphones.
The latest participants, which include Aeropostale, Champs Sports, Jamba Juice, Dillard’s and Macy’s, will be ready wherever the expansion occurs when this summer’s two-city soft launch is complete, says Jim Stapleton, Isis sales chief. Smartphones compatible with Isis also will be distributed nationally in preparation for a wider rollout, he says.
“It’s not a go, no-go,” Stapleton says of an eventual national launch. “That evaluation has been long past made for us. We believe that it is absolutely the right thing to do to launch on a national basis. Our carrier partners, bank partners, many of our merchant partners, are national in nature, and all are very interested in rolling it out.”
No exact date has yet been set for the soft launch, Stapleton says.
Participation will expand in widening circles, beginning with Isis and its partners’ employees, then by invitation to consumers, then for everyone interested, he says. All partners will provide awareness marketing in the two cities, and consumers can get started by visiting any of the three carriers’ store locations.
The telcos’ stores will sell NFC-enabled smartphones, and associates will help consumers activate the phones and platform and load the Isis wallet, Stapleton says. Consumers may enter their information from one of the participating issuer’s payment cards into the wallet, or they can sign up for one. Isis will preload the Isis cash card with a small amount of funds to motivate consumers to use the wallet. The phones also will include merchant-partner offers, says Stapleton.
The participating merchants, many of whom are regional and some as small as one location, either are equipped with contactless point-of-sale systems or will be by summer, Stapleton says.
The awareness strategy is as important for merchants as it is consumers because there are no exclusive contracts with merchant partners, Stapleton says. Any interested merchant can join the soft launch; this is the first wave of merchant announcements, he says.
What the participating firms can’t test in a laboratory is how consumers will engage, Stapleton says. The soft launch will familiarize consumers with Isis, but also help the merchants with consumer, employee and operational insights related to use of Isis and NFC for use for future expansion, he says.
In Salt Lake City, Isis simultaneously is soft-launching as a payment option for users of the Utah Transit Authority. To Isis, the agency is considered the same as a merchant, Stapleton says.
“We’ve been fairly pedantic about our desire to withhold a consumer launch until such time that a business ecosystem is pulled together that would offer consumers a choice of payment cards, a choice of merchants and a choice of carriers,” he says. “We’re quickly approaching that time.”
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