Isis Mobile Changing Name To Avoid Confusion With ISIS Jihadis

Isis, a mobile wallet service founded with financial backing from AT&T (NASDAQ:T), Verizon (NASDAG:VZ), and T-Mobile (TMUS), has announced it will change its name in an attempt to avoid association with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.

The 4-year-old company has hired a branding firm to help determine a new name, which will be announced within a few months. The about-face comes after the ISIS jihadi organization, an al Qaeda splinter group, has taken over large areas of Iraq and Syria in an attempt to install a new Islamic state.

“The ISIS militant group has been linked to sectarian violence against civilians and government forces in Iraq and Syria,” Michael Abbott , the chief executive of the company Isis, said in a statement Monday. “However coincidental, we have no interest in sharing a name with a group whose name has become synonymous with violence. We have made the decision to rebrand.”

Isis is one of the many companies that use near-field communication (NFC) technology to make it possible for customers to pay at a cash register by merely waving their smartphone in front of a sensor on the credit card reader. Besides facing tough competition from Google Wallet, PayPal, Square and others, Isis has struggled because Apple has not employed NFC technology in iPhones.