Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. and T- Mobile USA plan to invest more than $100 million in their joint venture that lets consumers pay for goods with mobile phones, people with knowledge of the project said.
The investment sets up a showdown between the venture, known as Isis, and rivals like a mobile-payment service from Google Inc. The amount of funding depends on how successful Isis is at attracting banks and merchants, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the financing is private.
The carriers have created the alliance to grab a piece of the market for mobile commerce, which lets consumers buy things by tapping devices against a reader at checkout. The market may reach $670 billion by 2015, Juniper Research says. The carriers may invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the venture if it gains followers, one person said, helping it catch up with Google, which unveiled its own mobile-wallet service in May.
This is from the guys whose devices "accidentally" keeps your information. Where you go, what you read, what you buy. Your texts are logged and your phone calls are listed. All of this is accessible under the handy dandy Patriot Act. What they can view, they can control. Eventually, this will lead to tracking even more invasive information, and right now there is nobody to answer to when private information is leaked or just filed away for eternity.
This is why we need privacy laws to be refined and enforced. The potential here for commercial and criminal exploitation is incredible.
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