Isis on Monday night set out a timetable for testing its NFC payment system. It now plans to start a trial in early-to-mid 2012 in Salt Lake City. The experiment will cover both paying for goods at stores as well as paying for UTA buses and trains.
The coalition between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon didn’t say what phones would be part of the trial. Only the Nexus S currently has built-in NFC, but 2011 BlackBerry phones and possibly some future Android 2.3 phones will use it as well. Apple may also have an iPhone 5 with NFC later this year.
A further expansion to all of the US is also unknown and may depend on the outcome of the trial.
Isis may be the first truly platform-independent NFC systems in the US. Google is testing with Citi later this year but is likely to confine the experiment to Android phones. A Sprint implementation will be open, but with just one carrier involved, may have trouble getting broad support.
