Acknowledging the "daunting task" that lies ahead in attempting to establish a new payment brand in the United States, the new chief marketing officer for the Isis joint venture said Isis is not planning to try to replace payment cards with mobile phones.
Ryan Hughes, in an interview with NFC Times following his appointment late last month as Isis’ first head of marketing, said the three mobile carriers behind the joint venture plan to do what they believe they can do much better than banks and payment card schemes–distribute handsets with interactive apps to create a new mobile-payment experience.
"It’s a daunting task to introduce a new payment brand, but I don’t think it’s us versus them in the traditional sense," he told NFC Times. "We’re not asking them (merchants and consumers) to take a different piece of plastic–that’d be much harder and a foolish endeavor. We’re doing what we know how to do as carriers. We do know how to distribute handsets and put new technology in front of consumers, whether it’s what we built, or whether it’s from developers whose apps end up on our handsets."
