Isis to Roll Out National NFC Payment Service This Year With iPhone Support

Isis, the mobile wallet venture that has been backed by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, has announced that it will initiate a national rollout of service this year and will include support for Apple’s iPhone, as reported by Bloomberg.

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“What you’ll see coming from us is a vastly improved product, a variety of new places to use it, a vastly improved user experience,” Ryan Hughes, chief marketing officer at New York-based Isis, said in an interview.

Prior to this announcement, Isis had begun testing its services at 4,000 locations in Austin, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah. Isis CEO Ryan Hughes revealed that in these tests, Isis users made payments with the phone more than ten times a month on average, and claimed that two-thirds of users in the test program opted to receive advertisements and offers from their favorite brands. This form of advertising would be something that carriers would use to capture new forms of revenue as the number of new smartphone customers grow.

Transactions using near-field communication (NFC) technology are expected to hit $110 billion by 2017, and has been included with many phones that run Google’s Android platform like the Samsung Galaxy S4, and phones that run Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, such as the Nokia Lumia 925. Apple’s iPhone does not currently have NFC capabilities, but the company has been rumored to integrate the technology with the potential launch of the iPhone 5S in the Fall.

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keysofanxiety

72 months ago

Wow, so sad to see Apple in this position where they're always playing catch up.

Rubbish. Apple don't just chuck in new technologies for the sake of it. As other people said, they wait for it to be widely adopted, or perfect the technology before putting it into their products.

IMHO, it's sad to see other manufacturers in a position where they don't take any pride in their product, and have a mentality of chucking stuff on a wall to see what sticks.

Rating: 6 Votes

macs4nw

72 months ago

Wow, so sad to see Apple in this position where they're always playing catch up.

The chips have been available for quite some time. My guess is APPLE has deliberately held off on this technology, waiting for wider adoption. Timing is everything, and until there is the underlying infrastructure, necessary to make payment via NFC an option that has been adopted by a reasonably large percentage of the industry in general, and retailers in particular, introduction of this tech by APPLE in their hardware, would have been a disappointing experience for those of us sporting iOS devices with such technology.

Rating: 3 Votes

Danyboy

72 months ago

Does this mean that iPhone 5S has NFC for sure?

Rating: 2 Votes

Asriel

72 months ago

Apple's success has often been based on taking technologies that have been around for a while and making them more accessible to the less tech savvy (which actually includes most of the population).

I would say rather than waiting for a technology to take off, it's hard for them to take off WITHOUT Apple being involved, and NFC is a perfect example of this. I have no doubt that if it is implemented in the next iPhone, then it will finally get the boost it needs to become widespread.

(Then Apple can claim to have "invented" it like they did with "multitouch" and "smartphones" ;-) )

Rating: 2 Votes

JasonKnight

72 months ago

No NFC in the iPhone for now

Does this mean that iPhone 5S has NFC for sure?

There is not going to be any NFC Chip in the iPhone for now. The reason is lack of space for it, and the fact that Apple don't believe in NFC. Apple is betting on Bluetooth 4.0, also called Bluetooth Low Energy or Bluetooth Smart.

Bluetooth 4.0 can be used in the same way as NFC, but also in a lot of ways that NFC can not. Apple will therefore hold off on trying to incorporate a NFC chip in the iPhone.

Rating: 2 Votes

josh995

72 months ago

Wow, so sad to see Apple in this position where they're always playing catch up.

Catch up? Adding NFC to the iPhone will be what makes NFC go mainstream at retail locations.

Look at all the Android phones that have NFC and how few locations are equipped to take advantage of NFC. My HTC One has NFC and I can't even use it because Google Wallet is blocked or doesn't work or whatever!

I bet as soon as NFC is added to iPhone, companies will be lining up to add NFC capabilities to their cash registers.

Rating: 2 Votes

keysofanxiety

72 months ago

This point, for example.

What happens when all the companies do that?

Well, Apple have developed many technologies that other companies have piggy-backed on. Apple put in their cash and efforts into the MacBook Air, iPhone, and a load of other products, despite a lot of controversy. This isn't some exclusive thing; it's how technology works.

With certain parts of technology, everybody chips in. But just go back to see the whole DVD vs HD-DVD vs BlueRay and you'll see it's simply ridiculous to immediately invest R&D into a new technology, just because it's new. And if your format loses, you lose.

I'm not sure how else to simplify this, your argument is mind-boggling. No point in Apple investing in NFC because it's not standard. There's no point. It would be stupid for them to have put NFC in the 3GS, for instance. Nobody bloody uses NFC. If, gradually, more shops worldwide accepted the format, then Apple would.

What if something 10x better than NFC was introduced next week, and everybody suddenly used it? What then? Good technology has a habit of taking off really quickly.

I don't know how to reply or clarify this, it just seems obvious to me. As far as I'm concerned, NFC is a gimmick at this point, and you think Apple not implementing it until it's the right time is a bad thing?

Crazy.

Rating: 1 Votes

Pilgrim1099

72 months ago

No point in Apple investing in NFC because it's not standard. There's no point. It would be stupid for them to have put NFC in the 3GS, for instance. Nobody bloody uses NFC. If, gradually, more shops worldwide accepted the format, then Apple would.

The reality is that some parts of Europe and the Asian markets have perfected the NFC technology and are way ahead of the American market. In fact, it's our country that needs to catch up to those guys and this explains why NFC has been trickling in the western hemisphere recently.

Otherwise, NFC has already been perfected, so you should ask yourself why Apple was waiting so long to do it. Why wait when a certain tech has been perfected?

It's NOT that they're waiting for it to be perfected, they're angling to PROFIT off it. They're waiting to EXPLOIT NFC for their benefit. Behind closed doors, they're going " Hmm...how do we make money off this? Look at all the gas stations, cafes, and store fronts! Look at how Japan's got NFC down to a T! How do we get a LEAD on this one? ".

Problem: They can't. It's too late because, it seems to me, NFC is standardized by a consortium of companies.

NFC is already here, believe it or not. But it seems ironic that Apple is afraid of going the NFC route due to some security issues and yet you have the CIA/NSA/PRISM situation that happened.

Here's a little NFC history for you and APPLE is not in it going all the way back to 1983:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication)

Rating: 1 Votes

Lord Hamsa

72 months ago

Case in point - look at the article from a day or two ago about using an iPhone or iPad to instantly set up a new AppleTV just by "touching" it with the device. This presumably uses low energy Bluetooth to essentially mimic NFC capability.

Rating: 1 Votes

Explicitic

72 months ago

Nobody bloody uses NFC. If, gradually, more shops worldwide accepted the format, then Apple would.

Obviously you've never been to countries like South Korea or Japan. It's extremely useful there.

Rating: 1 Votes

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