Summer was a bit late for Isis

Isis is a wallet solution for many payment instruments that reside on your phone. It is a product supported by key mobile operators (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) with the prime objective to activate the NFC capabilities in mobile phones. The drive is to create an acceptance mark (Isis Ready, Pay and Go or Pay and Save) where Isis phone app can be used to pay.

Isis were planning to have the first deployments ready and start accepting transactions at the end of summer. Austin and Salt Lake City was selected as the first cities where the solution would be trialed. But unfortunately, some snags lead to delays. (Read here). Good news was that the delay was not too long with the promised launch taking place this month - a bit late for summer (but just) (Read here).

The reason why this offering is interesting (and probably on the right track) is that the security is based on a special SIM card. (In other words, the secure element resides on the SIM). It also seems that the participating operators have constructed a commercial model that could potentially work. This is much more likely to succeed than Google wallet.