In the supposedly disruptive world of mobile payments, the status quo reigns — at least as far as Isis is concerned. Delivering the keynote at the Electronic Transaction Association's annual meeting in New Orleans this week, Isis CEO Michael Abbot had little new news to share regarding the company's ongoing efforts.

Instead, Abbot tailored his message to ETA's members, mostly merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations reselling merchant services. He stressed the fact that Isis is a part of the larger payment ecosystem, with partners spanning the entire payment value chain, including the card brands, issuers and POS manufacturers.

"Isis cannot build this industry by itself," Abbot told the audience. "We need your help. We are here to listen to you."

Isis, the NFC-based mobile payment joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, has been running pilot programs in Austin, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah, since last October, but Abbot didn't provide any information on those programs or when they would be expanded to other cities.

Instead, he emphasized that the task of bringing mobile payments to consumers is a big one that is about more than just "mobilizing credit cards," meaning replacing one form factor with another.  "It's about making plastic better," Abbot said.

Abbot seemed to take aim at other mobile payment efforts, especially those from smaller startups, questioning the security of those products if they hope to scale successfully. Abbot said it's easy to build a solution that transfers money, but to truly replace all the cards doing $3.5 trillion a year in transactions, a solution must be completely secure. "You cannot do trillions as a science fair project," he said.

That's not to say he was dismissive of every mobile payment product on the market. Abbott complimented Starbucks' mobile payment app calling that effort "nothing short of spectacular."

As to the future of Isis, Abbot spoke in generalities about the company's plans. "When we're ready, we'll start putting it out in other places," he said.

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