Wireless carriers to invest another $100 million in joint Isis mobile payment venture

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are getting ready to spend an additional $100 million on their combined venture for mobile payment, which they have called Isis.

Isis is a contactless payment system based on near field communication (NFC) technology, which is expected to play an important role in the highly competitive upcoming mobile payments marketplace.

Bloomberg has stated that the carriers have yet to make the final decision regarding the total amount that they are willing to spend based only on the ability of Isis to obtain merchant and bank support, though they may decide to invest a great deal more if it looks as though the platform will be rapidly gaining in popularity.

Google Wallet already appears to have taken the lead in this race, so Isis will need to scramble to catch up. Google Wallet is an open NFC platform which is a partnership among Google, Citibank, and MasterCard, which was launched in May 2011, and is expected to become available to consumers very soon.

The service allows shoppers to wave or tap their Android mobile devices with NFC enabled chips in order to pay for purchases at a point-of-sale that is capable of receiving MasterCard Paypass transactions.

Currently, the Google Wallet service is available only through the Nexus S phone through Sprint, and beyond its two current partners, there haven’t been any other banking or credit card deals announced.

On the other hand, though, Isis has obtained the backing of all of the major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. Their initial trails will begin in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, next year.