ISIS mobile wallet- a joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless launched in November of 2013 — allows customers packing a NFC-enabled Android handset, a special SIM and the right app to make contactless payments at tens of thousands of merchant locations nationwide. The mWallet is now supported by 68 smartphones and comes preloaded on 14 mobile devices. It is even available on phone not equipped with NFC–though in that case a special a specially-designed sleeve must be purchased separately.
After a bumpy start, it has apparently been a very strong month for ISIS, as the company is reporting 20,000 new downloads of their mWallet per day over the last 30 days.
In a post on the company’s blog, CEO Michael Abbott wrote
“In today’s digital economy, mobile is the future of money…At Isis, we are excited to be at the center of this movement and pleased to share an update on our growth. Since our launch nationwide last November, consumers across the country are experiencing the power and simplicity of paying with their phone and the response has been tremendous. Over the last 30 days, we have averaged over 20,000 Isis Wallet activations a day and our growth rate doubled over the prior month.”
Indeed Isis is also drawing strong praise from their corporate partners. Jamba Juice CEO James White noted that his company has seen a 50 percent month-over-month growth in Isis Wallet use and that they have redeemed 270,000 free smoothies through the rewards program that customers can store and access in their mWallet. He further noted that the company fully expects to have given away one million free smoothies by the fall of 2014.
AmEx general manager of U.S. payment options Stefan Happ expressed similarly positive sentiments:
“Our partnership with Isis has been extremely successful. We’re seeing positive growth of enrollments and we are hearing great things from our customers. With Isis, we’re able to reach a whole new customer base of tech-savvy users.”
Though pleased with the rapid uptick in adoption, ISIS is already looking toward the future, according to Abbott–with a particular focus on growing their ecosystem of partners to provide customers with more options for shopping destinations. The challenges ahead may be myriad–with HCE emerging as a competitor for NFC. HCE is backed as an NFC alternative by such major players as Google, Visa and MasterCard.
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