M-wallet: ISIS Planning First Commercial Launches
- The Joint Venture ISIS is planning its first commercial launches for this summer with about 1,000 Salt Lake City and Austin merchants. In addition to commitment of the Utah Transit Agency (Salt Lake City-based transportation specialist) to this project, which has already been disclosed, the Joint Venture hasn’t provided details about the other partner retailers but seems to be aiming the top 100 in sales volume focusing on daily (utility) expenses.
- Expected for July 2012, this pilot might start earlier “if Isis’s in-house sales team signs enough merchants”.
- Isis’s larger, or even national, deployment should occur in 2013. However, its expansion strategy (where? at what pace?) is not yet known.
- The mobile wallet should include a prepaid payment feature as well as options designed to enable users to “follow” their selected partner merchants and receive different kinds of offers. Google had adopted a likewise strategy for its mobile wallet which, when it was launched, also proposed a ten dollars preloaded amount to be used by end 2011.
- For privacy-related concerns, Isis should not include geolocated services at the moment but may allow the users to load content through QR codes captures.
- The JV already disposes of agreements with large card networks (American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa) on NFC contactless acceptance and has started speaking up names of partner issuers: Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard are already listed and others should be known in the next few weeks.