Dan Balaban at NFC Times has dropped a bit of a bombshell: Sprint is apparently working on an NFC mobile wallet of its own. And Balaban is reporting that the announcement could be as close as this summer.

That's a pretty big deal considering Sprint is (was?) a primary partner in the Google Wallet.

According to the NFC Times post, Sprint sees its own wallet product, which those inside the company supposedly call "Touch," as a way to "build relationships with banks and other service providers." Sprint didn't confirm the mobile wallet report, but a concern at wireless companies is that they will be shut out of the burgeoning mobile payment game and become simply the rails transactions ride. This is exactly the case with Sprint and Google Wallet, where Sprint supplies the phones and the network but gets no piece of the mobile transactions themselves.

In addition, a source at Sprint told Balaban that a mobile wallet offering of its own would give the company a product that can offer better competition to Isis, the mobile payment joint venture between Sprint rivals AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless that will launch in Austin and Salt Lake City later this year.

While Balaban said there's no sign that Sprint's efforts necessarily mean it will pull out of the Google Wallet, or that it won't continue to support Google Wallet on its phones, the news cannot be construed as a rousing vote of confidence in Google Wallet's future. Since its launch last May, Google Wallet has seen its fair share of issues, including disappointing adoption rates, pushback from other carriers and the loss of key employees.

Balaban goes on to report that sources inside Google have said efforts are under way to revamp the Google Wallet product in an attempt to improve its fortunes.

As always, it's good stuff from Balaban. There's more to the story and the entire post is well worth a read.

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