LOUISVILLE, KY and LE PECQ, FRANCE - Sprint is apparently working on an NFC mobile wallet of its own, with an announcement as close as this summer, Mobile Payments Today (MPT) and NFC Times reports.
Considering Sprint is a primary partner in the Google Wallet, "that€™s a pretty big deal," MPT writes.
Sprint€™s wallet product is an effort to "build relationships with banks and other service providers," NFC Times writes.
MPT characterized Sprint€™s move as strategic and one that will avoid getting it "shut out of the burgeoning mobile payment game and become simply the rails transactions ride." Such would be the case with Sprint and its role in Google Wallet, which supplies the phones and the network but receives no portion of the mobile transactions.
A Sprint source told NFC Times that a company mobile wallet would provide competition to Isis, a mobile payment joint venture that includes Sprint rivals AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.
No word on whether Sprint plans to pull out of the Google Wallet or if it would remove support for the service on its phones.