Google issues first response to Isis NFC payments deals

What does the news that Isis has signed up all four US payments networksVisa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express — for its NFC payments service mean for the future of the Google Wallet service?

Google Wallet

Osama Bedier, Google’s VP of payments, told NFC World last month that Google Wallet “is one of the biggest investments we’ve made at Google for a very long time.” The payments networks deals Isis has now announced will clearly have a major impact on Google Wallet. So NFC World suggested to Google today that this would be a really good time for an update on the progress of the Google Wallet project, expected to go live in September, and to explain key differences between Google’s approach and that of Isis.

Google is clearly not yet ready to talk about the implications of the Isis deals, however. A company spokesman responded to let us know only that “Mastercard is still a valuable partner to Google Wallet. The variety of players in this market speaks to the promise of mobile wallets.”

More on this as it comes in.

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