NFC-based payments won’t be a reality until mid-2012 and only in Salt Lake City, Utah — at least for those of you betting on Isis to deliver it.

Isis is the joint venture announced this past November 2010 between Verizon, TMobile and AT&T. These behemoths, normally fierce competitors, went into bed with one another to position wireless carriers to not be outed by a bank, payment network, Apple or Google in taking a leading role (and thus a leading cut of revenues) in NFC-based mobile payments. We haven’t heard much from Isis since their November announcement until this morning, when the coalition announced its official launch: mid-2012 in Salt Lake City.

Isis selected the city for rollout mainly because of its transit system, which is already NFC enabled. Transit has been one of the most well-received use cases for NFC mobile payment in trials in the past. Isis has signed up the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) to make the entire UTA transit system Isis-enabled for the launch, “marking the deployment of Isis as the first commercially available mobile transportation fare payment program in the US”.

Isis also announced that consumers will be able to use their mobile payment offering for payment, to redeem coupons, and to keep track and use merchant loyalty points.

Isis has also signalled a bit of a change of direction with its planned business model in the announcement. The company explains, “Additionally, Isis is investing in the necessary infrastructure to enable mobile commerce on a nationwide basis and will be available to all merchants, banks, payment networks and mobile carriers.”