The smartphone based payments venture with wireless company backing is undergoing a restructuring.
According to Softcard, the mobile wallet service that was launched by Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile, the company is undergoing a restructuring which has caused it to lay off 60 of its employees.
This wave of layoffs at the mobile payments technology company impacts between 12 and 30 percent of its workers.
That range is based on the range of the staff size of the company that has been listed on its LinkedIn account. That said, the company, itself, released a statement that explained that “Softcard is taking steps to reduce costs and strengthen its business.” It pointed out in the statement that among the various steps that were being taken by the mobile wallet service were in “simplifying the company’s organizational structure and consolidating all operations into its Dallas and New York offices, which involves layoffs across the company.”
This is a significant move for the mobile wallet, which has been struggling for adoption since its inception.
Originally known as Isis – after which its name was changed in order to eliminate any potential association with the terrorist group – this mobile app was designed to give consumers the ability to use their smartphones in order to pay for their purchases while in store, instead of having to use cash or credit cards. The app creates a mobile payments transaction through the same NFC technology that is used by Apple Pay.
That said, the launch of Apple Pay has blocked Softcard from being used over iPhones. Back in November, The CEO of the company, Mike Abbott, attended a payments conference at which he attempted to express that the fact that the mobile payments service would not be usable through Apple devices was actually a positive one not only for Softcard, but also for the entire smartphone based payments environment.
Abbott said that “We faced an industry that’s been fragmented, confused and riddled with inaction,” and then added that “We can all now bet on NFC.”
Apple isn’t the only one providing competition in the NFC technology based mobile wallet market, as there are a number of other players in this ecosystem, including Google Wallet, which – like Softcard – works on Android smartphones.
