Not to be the only wireless carrier left out of the mobile payments excitement — especially with their 4G — Sprint announced this morning that it will be offering an NFC solution to its customers later in 2011. The announcement was released at the same time Isis, the mobile payments joint venture between AT&T, TMobile and Verizon, announced its offering wouldn’t be available until mid-2012.

Isis seems to be vying to take a cut of every transaction made over their solution. Sprint, on the other hand, is going the more open route, aiming to share in revenues around things like targeted coupons and advertisements served to their customers mobile wallets. This may mean their solution is more attractive to merchants, a critical party to onboard to make mobile payments mainstream here in the US. That being said, if merchants have to integrate with a multiple mobile payment and loyalty offerings, they will ultimately amass around accepting the one with the most consumers. (This is the same reason many merchants, for example, don’t accept Discover card: the Discover cardholder base is much smaller than that of AmEx, MasterCard and Visa – so much so that for some merchants, it is not worth the cost of acceptance.)

“We intend to make this an open solution where consumers can use their phone in a variety of physical locations,” said Kevin McGinnis, vice president of product platforms for Sprint. “Because we’re allowing other brands and other institutions to participate, they can also tell their consumers that this is available on Sprint.”