Verizon delays approval of Google Wallet, blesses own Isis payment app

In an article posted this morning, DSLReports is alleging that Verizon is acting anti-competitively in its delaying approval of Google's phone-based Google Wallet mobile commerce application. The accusation does indeed appear to be based solidly in reality—Verizon's competing Isis mobile wallet system has been made available for a variety of phones on different carriers, in spite of employing the same "secure element" for data storage that has held up the Google Wallet app.

DSLReports points out that this isn't the first time Verizon has kept a competitor's technology stuck in the mud while scrambling to bolster their own apps:

For those who've been around this kind of behavior from Verizon is nothing new. You'll recall that initially Verizon blocked Google Maps from having access to their phones' GPS hardware, in order to give their own navigation software (and its monthly fee) a leg up.

With Google Wallet, Verizon's heartburn stems from the app's required integration with its host device's "secure element," which according to a letter sent from Verizon to the FCC, is a "secure and proprietary piece of hardware" that is "fundamentally separate from the device's basic communications functions or its operating system." The Google Wallet app uses the "secure element" to cryptographically store details about a user, which are used during payment.

Initially, Verizon blocked the installation of the Google Wallet app, though it eventually relented and simply withheld its blessing of the app in the Google Play store. Verizon's point of view is at least somewhat sort-of-kind-of justified: use of the secure element means that the Google Wallet app has extra approval issues and Verizon needs time to study it. The huge problem, though, is that Verizon's Isis app does the same thing—it also uses your device's secure element to store data, and yet it appears to have none of the "integration" issues, and it isn't facing any delays at all with approval. It's good to be the king.

Verizon isn't the only guilty party here, as Isis is actually backed by a consortium of cellular carriers that includes AT&T and T-Mobile. Still, Verizon is the one specifically withholding its approval; the arrival of its own payment app which does the same thing but suffers none of the "integration" issues is circumstantial but pretty damning. Telecom providers like Verizon have a long history of behaving badly; this is just the latest in a long string of "because we can" activities.