NEW YORK: The cellphone has been more than a cellphone for years, but soon it could take on an entirely new role - standing in for all of the credit and debit cards crammed into wallets. Instead of swiping a plastic card at the checkout counter, consumers would merely wave their phones. There's just one hitch: While the technology is already being installed in millions of phones - and is used overseas - wide adoption of the so-called mobile wallets is being slowed by a major behind-the-scenes battle among corporate giants.

Mobile phone carriers, banks, credit card issuers, payment networks and technology companies are all vying to control these wallets. But first, they need to sort out what role each will play and how each will get paid. The stakes are enormous because small, hidden fees that are generated every time consumers swipe their cards add up to tens of billions of dollars annually in the United States alone.

They are facing competition from companies they see as interlopers. These include PayPal and Google, which want to play a part in a new payment system, as well as Apple and the mobile carriers, which want to collect fees through their control of the phones themselves. In the middle - and perhaps playing a deciding role - are the retailers . They have to install terminals that accept mobile payments. Consumer advocates, meanwhile, said they were concerned that a mobile system would bring higher fees and questioned whether consumers even want a new system.

But now, finally, the pieces are starting to fall into place. "Now that we have this commitment by the handset manufacturers and telcos, I think things are looking far more promising than ever," said Gwenn Bezard, research director at the Aite Group, a research and advisory firm focused on the financial services industry. "The question is, Are telcos and card networks and banks going to agree on anything?" Visa and MasterCard now dominate the major tracks that shuttle credit card and debit payments between banks and retailers.

Retailers must pay the banks issuing the cards a percentage of each transaction, and payment networks like Visa take a small cut. So for every $1 spent by a consumer, the retailer keeps about 97 cents, the card-issuing bank takes nearly 2 cents and the remaining penny goes to the merchant's bank handling the transaction and the payment network. With mobile payments, it is still unclear how all the players will get paid or if any of the costs will trickle through to consumers, perhaps through new fees.

Mobile carriers may demand that the card issuers pay them something akin to rent, or reach some other agreement, to store important payment credentials on a secure piece of the chip inside the phone. There are several technologies that allow phones to communicate wirelessly with other technologies, though the front-runner for payments is one called near-field communication, or NFC.

The venture, known as Isis, is expected to introduce its system next year. Barclaycard, already a major player in Britain , will be the first issuer of the group's in-phone credit card and sees it as an opportunity to expand in the US. Bank of America , Wells Fargo, US Bancorp and JPMorgan Chase , working with Visa, are all in various stages of testing wallets that would provide access to some of their own credit or debit cards. Because their model is powered by a chip that consumers insert into a slot in certain phones, it does not require the cooperation of the mobile operators.