Sprint and American Express Serve up mobile wallet

Sprint and American Express have partnered to promote the AMEX mobile wallet Serve, the collaboration is Serve’s first first relationship with a mobile carrier since it launched in March of this year.

Sprint is becoming more relevant in the mobile wallet space by the day as a serious competitor to both AT&T and Verizon announced today a collaboration with American Express to promote its Serve mobile wallet platform. American Express released Serve in late March, but until now it hasn’t had any relationship with a mobile network in the United States or anywhere else. The Serve mobile wallet service will be available to Sprint Zone customers. Sprint has now partnered with Google with its Google Wallet platform and can now boast the Amex Serve system in its portfolio of mobile wallet’s, which places the company in a positive position as mobile wallet adoption is said to be brisk this year and next.

“Sprint is pleased to join with American Express to offer this convenient tool for sending and receiving money to friends, paying bills and making purchases online,” said Kevin McGinnis, Vice President of Product Platforms for Sprint. “Our relationship with American Express is a great example of Sprint’s open enablement strategy. Sprint brings practical, easy-to-use apps and services to our customers from mobile wallet trusted brands like American Express.”

How the American Express Serve mobile wallet works on  Sprint

Instead of using NFC, the American Express Serve mobile wallet transactions are added to customers’ mobile bills with Sprint. The Serve mobile wallet is described as “a digital payment platform that unifies online, offline and mobile payment options into a single account,” which compliments the Google Wallet product offering. Payments can be billed directly from Sprint rather than being billed to a card issuer. Serve can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card, or by receiving money from another Serve account. Sprint customers who register and qualify for a Serve account will be able to use their Serve card for making purchases at American Express participating merchants, paying their Sprint mobile bill, and in the future, for redeeming offers on goods and services. The latter tells us that American Express is planning on adding loyalty programs to the mix. You qualify for a American Express Serve account just as you would with a credit card.

Android and more for American Express’ Serve mobile wallet on Sprint and other carriers

Serve isn’t an Android-only affair and, in fact, also supports Apple iOS mobile wallet operating systems. American Express has said it will continue to be develop Serve to support additional OS’s including Microsoft and RIM operating systems. Apple is widely rumored to be opening up the iPhone to Sprint this fall which further strengthens Sprint’s growth. The American Express Serve mobile wallet only enhances the differential that Spring now offers its customers.

“Sprint is a forward thinking company that is constantly looking for new ways to simplify processes and provide the best solutions for its customers. Their decision to promote Serve in the Sprint Zone is a reflection of that philosophy and we are excited to move forward with this relationship,” said David Messenger, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Growth for American Express. “We believe that customers will benefit greatly from taking advantage of Serve’s functionality as a quick, user-friendly way for tackling the often tedious task of paying bills and making mobile payments.”

We agree, Sprint is a forward thinking company. This collaboration shows the next step in Sprint’s commitment to promote and run an open environment that promotes businesses and consumers being enabled to use technology that runs over the network’s data connection. Instead of attempting to mobile wallet control and profit from this new industry space, Sprint is showing how being the network that enables its customers will pay dividends. The stronger Sprint gets, the harder it will be for Isis to justify its existence. Our only grumble about Sprint is this – when is Sprint going to get on with building this LTE network with LightSquared and give the big two carriers a run for their money? Come on Sprint, you have the mobile wallets, you have the phones to compete – make it a full house by getting those dreamy LTE radio waves across the United States so we can use our mobile wallets to switch to Sprint in the mobile wallet millions . We would also wager that American Express is looking into how to give its Serve mobile wallet platform some NFC goodness. Just as a parting side note, Serve isn’t available on the Nexus S 4G or the Samsung Moment – we imagine that’s a Google thang.