ISIS venture to invest $100 million in mobile payments platform

As more consumers adopt mobile devices to perform their daily tasks, wireless carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless plan to invest more than $100 million to promote mobile commerce that would allow people to pay for goods using their phones.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, the joint venture - known as ISIS - is a response to mobile payment services from Google. Sources with knowledge of the project told the news provider that the amount of funding for the project depends on the response from banks and merchants.

Citing a study conducted by Juniper Research, Bloomberg reported that the mobile commerce market could reach $670 billion by 2015. Google unveiled its mobile payment platform in May and, according to the report, sources claim the three carriers may up their investments even further it the project is successful.

"Over the long haul, operators have to create new businesses that derive value from more than access," Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless analyst, told Bloomberg. "It's a given that people are going to be transacting more over cell phones. It could open a potential new revenue stream for them."

ISIS will be launched next year in several cities across the country and the service will charge marketers fees for sending offers to mobile users' phones. The platform will also provide consumers with the ability to redeem coupons using their mobile devices and is not strictly for making payments, the report stated.

Jaymee Johnson, ISIS' head of marketing, said that the platform will launch in mid-2012 in Salt Lake City and Austin as two of the pilot cities.

Some of the companies associated with the join venture include MasterCard, Discover Financial Services, American Express and Visa, which is also working on its own mobile payments platform, Bloomberg said. Also, Visa is encouraging U.S. merchants to adopt new terminals to accept mobile payments.

As the Juniper Research study points to a exploding market in 2015, the global mobile payments industry is expected to surpass $86 billion in 2011, according to research firm Gartner. This amount is more than 75 percent higher than the nearly $49 billion spent in 2010. Worldwide mobile payment users are also on the rise. In 2011, more than 141 million people will use their mobile devices to make payments, increasing more than 38 percent from 2010, Gartner said.