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.
