Sprint says its NFC-based payment service will launch this year

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AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon may have all lined upto support the so-called Isis mobile payment system for cellphones, but Sprint has decided to go it alone for various reasons, and it's now saying it plans to beat the others to market. As Bloombergreports, Sprint is already working with payment networks and handset makers on its own NFC-based system, and it says it plans to roll out the 



service sometime this year, while Isis has previously stated that it only expects to be ready in 2012. While details are otherwise still fairly light, Sprint says that customers will be able to have purchases billed to their regular credit card statements rather than their phone bill, and that it will rely on alternatives to taking a percentage each transaction for itself as Isis plans to do. Of course, while this is Sprint's latest move in the space, it's far from its first -- in fact, it's been running NFC trials as far back as 2007.