ISIS Mobile Payment System Coming In September

ISIS is finally preparing to bring its mobile payment system to the market sometime in the next month, something that will bring mobile payments to a larger group of users on multiple carriers.

According to Bloomberg, ISIS should finally roll out its mobile payment system in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas sometime in September. The AT&T-, Verizon-, and T-Mobile-backed organization will finally make mobile payments available to users on a carrier other than Sprint or its prepaid brands.

The group originally wanted to roll out the system sometime in the first half of 2012, but had to delay those plans. Unlike Google Wallet, which relies on Google’s servers and the carriers (or just Sprint) for verification of payments, ISIS’ system uses the credit card companies to handle transactions.

ISIS has partnerships with many major credit card companies including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover.

Like Google Wallet, ISIS’ system uses NFC in smartphones to make mobile payments. Many modern Android smartphones already have NFC chips, but some phones need updates to support the mobile wallet. The HTC One X already supports the system thanks to an update earlier this month, and the latest update to the T-Mobile Galaxy S II also enabled support for the system.

While ISIS mobile payments will only launch in two cities we hope it expands to more cities in the near future. Google Wallet is available in a surprising number of stores, but only a few phones support the system. More phones will support the ISIS system which hopefully means wider adoption, which will mean we’re one step closer to replacing our wallets with our smartphones.