ISIS is a mobile payment solution developed by three US carriers – Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Sources close to the joint-venture have revealed that ISIS is very close to launch. The payment service and its accompanying app for Android will launch nationwide within the next few weeks.

The mobile payment solutions are becoming popular, though they have been scattered and too hard to use. Among the most popular services are Google Wallet and Square. Now, the joint venture ISIS will offer another alternative, hopefully more convenient and easy to use. With Isis, any NFC device can receive payment by tapping on a terminal set. The money is transferred from the bank account like a credit card payment.

ISIS will work on most of the new NFC capable Android devices. Additionally, the carriers are working on an iOS application and an NFC – case for iPhone. So, ISIS is launching soon for Android, probably within the next few weeks, while the iOS support will arrive at a later stage. When launched, ISI will allow contactless payments in 1.3 million locations in the US.

Many analyzers, however, are too skeptical about the ISIS success. First, the service can’t support iPhone that remains NFC free. Currently, just 18% of the Americans own NFC capable devices, a customer survey shows. On the other hand, Google has released a new version of its Wallet that works on Android 2.3 and higher. That means it could work on any device having at least version 2.3 even if it doesn’t have an NFC chip. At the same time, companies like Walmart and Target have joined forces to work on a mobile payment system that is based on cloud-based technology, not on NFC.

Source: Fierce Wireless