LAS VEGAS —There was a long minute when it seemed that Isis –the mobile payments platform backed by Verizon, AT&T andT-Mobile – seemed to die in a first-day keynote at Money2020, thesprawling payments show where innovators flock to strut theirstuff.

That near-death moment occurredwhen Isis CEO Mike Abbott announced he would do a live demo of arefreshed app – and absolutely nothing happened on screen.

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Abbot persevered, however, and eventually the app came to life,engendering much applause at the Monday session.

Abbott also won laughs with his quip that “it is easier to getCongress to pass a budget than to get financial institutions andretailers to agree on a payments system.”

Quips aside, Abbott's news is that Isis will roll out itsrefreshed mobile payments platform nationally “in a few weeks.”

“In a few weeks,” he added, “we will introduce consumers to Isisin thousands of locations.”

He added, “You can get Isis today.”

That later is important because, in recent months, many paymentsexperts had quietly written off Isis as dead as the companyreleased scant information about the pilots it had launched a year ago in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas.

The stumbling block has been that Isis is NFC (Near Field Communications) powered and few merchantspresently have NFC-capable terminals and not many more consumershave NFC- equipped mobile phones. Apple, notably, has eschewed NFCthus far on the iPhone.

Nonetheless, Abbott's Money2020 appearance packed a loudmessage: Isis has not yet decided the fly the white flag ofsurrender.

Abbott optimistically added, “By the end of 2014, there will be30 million Isis devices in the U.S.”