This deal between the sandwich chain and the service formerly known as Isis will rule out Apple Pay for the moment.
Subway, the sandwich chain, is now teaming up with Softcard in order to provide customers with the opportunity to use mobile payments to pay for their meals instead of a traditional credit or debit card.
The announcement stated that the NFC technology based mobile wallet will be usable at Subway next month.
As of October 1, Softcard mobile payments will be an accepted form of transaction at Subway. This joint venture among Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and AT&T Mobility was originally called Isis Wallet, but recently rebranded itself in order to place some distance between its name and the militant group that is currently terrorizing parts of the Middle East. This app is now supported by over 80 different mobile devices and is preloaded on over 30 of them.
The Softcard wallet will let customers choose their smartphone as a payment method.
All that customers need to do to use this mobile payments service through their NFC enabled smartphone is to tap the terminal at the Subway restaurant. This is now being rolled out after having completed a pilot program last year. Now, it will be available in over 26,000 locations of the restaurant found throughout the United States.
That said, despite the fact that the iPhone 6 now finally has NFC technology built into it, its users will still need to continue to use traditional transaction methods, at least for the next little while. The reason is that the Apple Pay service has been launched by that device maker and the iPhone 6 will be restricted exclusively to that service, at least for the first year after its release. Therefore, despite the fact that the technology is compatible, the wallet formerly known as Isis will not be available for Apple smartphone users.
That said, Michael Abbot, the CEO of Softcard, has stated in a recent blog post that the company is “actively working with Apple” to make that mobile wallet compatible with the iPhone 6 at some point next year.
The company also stated that it brought in 600,000 new members over the last month.
The Isis mobile wallet joint venture in the Unites States has now released a report that has indicated that it is activating an average of 20,000 new users per day, and that during the last month, it enjoyed an addition of 600,000 members over what it had previously registered.
Isis is the joint venture that brings AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile U.S. together.
This mobile wallet, like the other giants in this category, had a very slow start, facing far more challenges to adoption than had been anticipated. Now, it is gradually releasing a trickle of data to help to show its marketplace performance since its initial nationwide launch in November. Michael Abbott, the CEO of the company, wrote in a blog post that the current activation rate had reached double what it had been during the month before. That said, the company failed to mention exactly how many total activations had occurred since its NFC technology using mobile payments service became available.
There are now 68 different device models from the telecoms that support the Isis mobile wallet.
At the same time, Isis comes preloaded on 14 smartphones from Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, and the plan is to add even more preloaded devices in the future. In his blog post, Abbott added that “We plan to further broaden our ecosystem of partners to provide customers with more options as well as new ways to save. We’ll continue to offer compelling consumer deals–all with the goal of helping consumers become ever more comfortable with mobile wallets.”
He also explained that in that vein, they will maintain their goal toward innovation to ensure that the users of Isis will be able to take advantage of an experience that is “simple and enjoyable” as they make their product purchases and complete their payment transactions.
A spokesperson for the company underscored the fact that this mobile wallet is now accepted at “hundreds of thousands” of store locations across the country that currently support mobile payments using contactless NFC technology. Some of these include Coca Cola vending machines, Jamba Juice, and even McDonald’s.
