Google is in talks to buy Softcard (formerly ISIS), the mobile payments company started by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. According to TechCrunch, the price “may be under $100 million” which would be a steep loss for the carriers, which have pumped “hundreds of millions” into the company, but laid off about 60 people a few days ago. Thanks to the limited success of the wallet, no small number of people wonder whether there’s anything left for Google to buy.
Softcard is an NFC payments app, like Google Wallet and Apple Pay, which allows users to buy things with their smartphones. When Softcard was founded in 2010, Google Wallet was the only mobile payment app in town. With the growing power of Android, the carriers basically created Softcard as a “No Google Club” that they hoped would prevent Google from controlling the mobile payment space. The three companies, Verizon especially, spent the next few years trying to get a Softcard app off the ground while blocking Google Wallet from their devices.
The buyout would mean a more aggressive push from Google to compete in mobile payments. The technology has been a favorite of Silicon Valley companies hoping to expand beyond their roots selling devices or services and into the lucrative financial industry. PayPal, one of the most successful payments companies, was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Since then, companies large and small, ranging from Amazon to Facebook to the startup Square have all tried to become a go-to service for payments, particularly on the Web.