The joint venture between T-Mobile USA, AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, Isis, has announced that it is going to initiate the Isis mobile commerce program in Salt Lake City in early 2012 to mid 2012. An agreement has also been made between the Utah Transport Authority and Isis in order to make the entire transit system of the UTA Isis-enabled, which makes the availability of Isis the first mobile transportation fare payment program available commercially in the US. Isis is also additionally investing in the infrastructure that is necessary to make mobile commerce available on a nationwide basis and it will be offered to all banks, merchants, mobile carriers and payment networks.
The Chief Executive Officer at Isis, Michael Abott, said that Isis is aiming to bring the concept of mobile commerce to reality by working with Salt Lake Chamber, Utah Transit Authority and the merchants in the Salt Lake City area. This will give the consumers of Salt Lake City new methods to pay, shop and save. Formed in mid-November 2010, Isis is focused solely at bringing mobile commerce technology to Salt Lake City for making point of sale purchases through Near Field Communication technology. The system used by Isis will offer the customers a convenient and secure way for making payments, storing merchant loyalty cards and redeeming coupons through their phone.
Isis will deploy the system for enabling NFC payments in the Salt Lake City and UTA transportation by 2012. After having installed a tap on, tap off system in 2009, UTA has become a frontrunner in contactless payments in the transit industry. What works in Isis’ favour is that the current system will only need a slight change to allow users to pay by tapping their phones on the reader.
