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AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile Bet Big On Mobile Payments
An anonymous reader writes "Bloomberg reports that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA will be dumping over $100 million into developing their mobile payment system, Isis, in an effort to battle back against Google Wallet. 'Isis aims to get ahead of its rivals by relying on its carrier partners' existing distribution network and customer relationships. Phones set up for Isis service are expected to be available at carrier stores in the trial cities. ... The carriers could potentially preinstall Isis software onto their phones, making it easier to use. They also may push handset manufacturers to adopt Isis software.'"
I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that the carriers are going to be sticking their dicks into this one. I wonder what surcharges and fees will be associated with this. I also wonder what handset and device restrictions will be imposed as a result of this.
Please don't laugh, but that is one hope for being able to cut down on transaction fees, lower the barriers to starting escrow services, and get rid of unnecessary middlemen.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
so they have enough money to dump into this, but yet they were so cash strapped they had to seek bailouts and bandwidth caps???
What happens if you lose your phone? - If I lose my visa card, it's hard to use with the chip+pin in UK these days.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
No mention of Sprint in the article... I wonder who'll end up winning from this.
Isis aims to get ahead of its rivals by relying on its ... customer relationships.
Yup, because most people have a great relationship with their mobile providers right?
Additionally I'm not so sure I want these people responsible for my "virtual wallet".
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
So basically it sounds like the phone cartel is using every bit of their power derived from the oligopoly to exclude Google. Go free market!
Maybe not a 30% cut, but if they develop their own system you can bet there will be some sort of cut...
Too bad all these mobile payment services can't standardize on a multi-connection protocol for their transactions. You have some using QR codes, some using NFC, some using Bluetooth and some going through the Internet, all in their own little walled garden. What a sad clusterfuck this is going to be.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
-- AT&T&T(Mo) Customer Service
$ wget --quiet -O - http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot | grep title | grep "Bet Big On Mobile Payments" AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile Bet Big On Mobile Payments What's with the & ? Stop doing that, please!
fuck the name of 'Isis', which was quite a benign goddess and a cult back from late egyptian into roman times. to boot, they used the name for a payment system. the most rabid corporations that are out there to boot.
Read radical news here
Ever get a strange charge on your phone bill? Ever try to get it reversed? Yeah, good luck with that. For all their problems, I'll stick with bank credit / debit cards for payments.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Folks, the rush towards mobile payments is a gold mine for marketers and other creepy advertising types. Bank cards may be electronic but they aren't the equivalent of a primary key. Bank cards might be tied to a name and unique number but the information is quite fragmented across multiple systems in tables which can't be joined.
A mobile payments system tied to a phone number which follows somebody for decades does have a suitable primary key. Everything you buy will be part of a giant telco database, sold to the highest bidder.
What's more, large retailers will also have your phone number or device ID as the primary key for you in their own databases.
Nerds should have the understanding to realize that this push towards anti-privacy has been engineered by megacorporations and plutocrats for their benefit, not ours. We should be able to understand the pitfalls. Why do we embrace something designed in their favor, not ours?
Mobile payments were designed to make their sales pitches to you more convenient. Your shopping experience is a secondary concern. They're counting on herd-like neophiles to sign up for even more intrusive marketing.
The same understanding which drives us to run AdBlock Plus and Noscript should lead us to avoid this intrusive garbage, lest we end up like tagged cattle.
So many of the world's sustainability problems are the result of 150dB of advertising noise blaring orders at us to spend money we don't have on things we don't need. I love technology as much as the next Slashdotter, but more is not always better. I'd argue that a society free of advertising and mindless consumerism is more advanced than one with the spiffiest gadgets.
Mobile payments are like a superglobal loyalty card.
One loyalty card to rule them all.
....anyone who trusts this type of "technology" enough to open up their banking and CC spaces deserves the account cleansing they will ultimately receive. This is facebook for your bank accounts. Good luck with all that there.....
Last I heard, Apple said they were planning on coming out with their own proprietary payment system. Perhaps this is why the rush to implement something by the telcos as well.
Isis is said to listen to the prayers of the wealthy power brokers, while acting like a friend to the working people and poor. Sounds like a very apropos name.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I like new technology as much as anyone, but I can carry a drivers license, a credit/ATM card, and some cash in a small card holder. This package is thin, light, requires no batteries, can be dropped, can be immersed in water, and can perform almost any financial transaction short of buying a house. I had a credit card with blink (lets you tap the card reader to pay), but hardly used it. It is just as easy to swipe a card, now that many transactions do not require a signature. I choose my payment method based on rebates/rewards and lack of fees. I wonder how ATT/Verizon/Tmobile will compete on costs.
The last I heard Apple said that they are not being developing an NFC system. Of course, rampant speculation is always rife with Apple products like as soon as the iPad2 was launched, there were rumors that the iPad 3 would launch in the end of summer /early fall. Now that this time has passed I'm sure someone will attribute Apple's failure to launch it due to Steve Job's departure. Those people are ignoring that Apple's iDevices have a refresh cycle of at least a year and that Apple almost never announces a product until it is almost immediately ready for sale.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I pay for all in person transactions in cash, credit card for online purchases. I don't see how there can be any advantage to replacing my current method of payment in either scenario with anything else. Even if phone companies weren't evil, I don't see any advantage.
Anyone remember how badly the phone companies fucked pretty much everyone back in the days when they were willing to act as billing agents for anyone and everyone that was willing to claim that callers intended to pay for things via their phone bill?
Remember how much fun it was when the phone company automatically took the vendor's side because they only got paid for successful payments? They threatened to cut off your phone service and send your bill to collections, unless you could prove that you didn't authorize the payment.
Remember the delight of the offshore scammers when they realized that the phone companies were essentially acting as willing accomplices, and they started making "mistakes" knowing full well that many people would just pay up rather than try to fight the phone company?
If the only food in the world was being sold by someone that only took payments through this system, I would rather starve to death than give that power back to the phone companies.
See that "Preview" button?
No.
But forget about technology making things cheaper for the consumer. Technology is now simply a way to streamline the ability of peripheral entities to extract new rents, while lowering the actual "service" they "provide".
The payment of a transaction USED to be between you, the payee, and a penny-slice for the bank.
If the service-providers are salivating enough to "Bet Big"? You will take a haircut.
With an Internet like this? Give me back USENET and a 14.4K modem. It really was that much better a way to live.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I really do NOT want any form of payment to be available on my phone handset.
I'm trying to do less by credit, and more by cash these days.
I don't want another potential theft place either (my phone). It does plenty now...phone, txt, camera, games....but I prefer to keep my finances in my wallet. I rarely run the risk of pulling my wallet out and leaving it mistakenly on a counter somewhere....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Google will promptly change the name of their Wallet service to ODIN.
I wish I had mod points for you today...
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
They'll get a "cut" by not allowing it on any of their hardware in lieu of their own.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The limited liabilities that you point out are in some cases irrelevant because the money is not taken from your card it is billed to your phone bill - the contract is then written by the phone companie(s) who don't have to give the same protections that the banks have to give, there could be all sorts of nasty small print - do you trust the telcos? do you always read the T's and C's?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Now I get to pay for the privilege of using their platform to give them my money.
To be totally honest, I don't really care that much about mobile payment, or buying anything with my cellphone. I don't plan to do so, and would object if they suddenly decide to try and force such a service on me.
But then again, when I purchased my cellphone and my service, I was purchasing a phone. Which is what I own. I do not have a smartphone, an iPhone, an Android, or any of the recent offerings. I have no interest in being able to read my email wherever I am, could care less about texting, already have an MP3 player, don't want or need a web browser, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or any other applet on my phone. I want a cellPHONE, to place and receive calls, and that's it.
Just because I work in the computer industry doesn't mean I automatically want every shiny! new toy that comes out. I need a good reason for having anything like that, and since I already have a computer for things I do at home, a netbook for travel, and that's it. If I go out to dinner, I want to enjoy dinner, not respond to people as I see far too many doing today. The same for going to a movie, spending time with friends, or just enjoying myself... I don't want an electronic tether that folks can yank on. If you can't bother to call me voice, then you're not worth responding to at that moment and that's all there is to it.
This (the ability to buy with your cellphone) is just another "feature" that isn't necessary, but the phone companies are going to push it on us whether we want it or not.
Well,
It's not just the phone market. This is actually a good example of a free market. Google is doing it's thing. The carriers are desperately doing it's own. Apple will come out swinging with their own NFC platform. RIM as well. And then there are big big hitters from card processors that basically have full blown out platforms already in production. There are so many players, it's actually nice to see such a huge possible market being fought by every single company.