Tag: mobile wallet

Isis has announced it is changing its name to Softcard.

The Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T supported, American mobile wallet platform, is rebranding in an effort to avoid the possibility of being wrongly associated with the Islamic militant group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), which has been involved in the deaths of Americans and citizens of other nations, including the recent public execution of American journalist, James Foley.

The change will take place in “a few weeks” according to the company’s homepage.

The CEO of Isis, Michael Abbott, explained in a note regarding the change that “However coincidental, we have no desire to share a name with this group and our hearts go out to those affected by this violence.” Abbott also added that only the name is changing, but everything else about the mobile wallet app will remain the same.

In the next few weeks, the Softcard app will be launched. Once it has been released, users of the portable payment system can update it as they usually would and once they do, their Isis Wallet will simply become SoftCard. Users can still expect the same services and features they are used to that enable them to securely store their financial information and make in-store purchases with a tap of their smartphones. “Your current Isis Wallet will continue to work as it always has,” Abbott says.

The CEO also explained the reasons behind why the name Softcard was selected. According to Abbott, what the company wanted was a name and “visual identity that had the power, flexibility and simplicity to define our category.”

Isis – soon to be Softcard – isn’t the only mobile wallet making news.

Amazon is one of the most recent companies to enter the mobile payments market with Amazon Wallet. However, at present, that app only stores reward and gift cards which can be scanned during purchasing.

In addition, the Isis mobile wallet name change announcement occurred almost a week prior to Apple unveiling details regarding its mobile payments service, Apple Pay, which was revealed by the company on September 9. Apple’s new payment system also uses NFC technology and will only be available on its new smartphones the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

As the number of cyber attacks over traditional computers, smartphones, and tablets grow, this is worrying.

Technology news reports are continually announcing the latest massive cyber attacks and data breaches, but this doesn’t seem to be having much of an impact on many people in the United Kingdom, as a new survey has shown that many are not taking mobile security all that seriously.

It would be expected that these headlines would cause the average users to take protective measures.

However, this does not appear to be the case. The survey was conducted on behalf of ZenMate by OnePoll. It involved the participation of 2,000 respondents from the United Kingdom. What it determined was that there is an overall apathy present among smartphone users when it comes to their own mobile security. Fewer than half of the people who were surveyed said that they take any action to ensure that they are using protected connections or that they secure their browsing data when using their smartphones.

Over 45 percent said that they didn’t even take the basic mobile security step to use a password to lock their devices.

Without even using a smartphone password to lock the device, if that gadget is ever stolen, the thief would be able to gain instant access to any apps, contacts, or other personal data contained within the mobile device. This is quite surprising, when taking into consideration all of the attention that is being received by the prevalence of cyber attacks, overall.

Moreover, with reports that suggest that the GCHQ and the NSA have been monitoring online communications, it would be easy to assume that smartphone users would want to take a few extra steps to remain protected against data theft and other related threats. The results of this survey, however, clearly indicate otherwise when it comes to the typical British smartphone using consumer.

Only 41.5 percent of the survey participants said that they took precautionary mobile security measures, even when asked about their habits when using unsecured public networks. This aligns well with a recent Ofcom report that indicated that people don’t usually think twice about their privacy when they access public WiFi connections.