PayPal goes mobile!

send and receive money via SMS

[moltar]

From PayPal website [paypal.com]:

Send money to friends and family

Send money securely, anytime, from wherever you are. You don’t need cash or a check – just your phone.

After you activate your phone, you can send money one of two ways:

• Text to 729725 (PAYPAL) with the amount and recipient’s phone number.
  Example: send 5 to 4150001234

• Call 1-800-4PAYPAL (1-800-472-9725) and follow the instructions.

[LifeinAsia]

I seem to remember that PayPal already allowed you to "beam" money to other PayPal users way back when they first started. Or was that only for Palm Pilot users?

[moltar]

I haven't seen that. This thing was released yesterday I beleive. Sounds like a really good idea to me.

[amygrech]

Is this method secure? I would think it could be easily intercepted...

Amy

[whoisgregg]

Paypal calls you to confirm each transaction.

[pageoneresults]

This is way cool! Now we can capture some of those sales from those who don't want to purchase online. This opens up a big window of opportunity. Thank you PayPal!

[ogletree]

So what if somebody finds your phone. They could drain your account. If they call you all they have to do is answer the phone. If you have this lock your phone.

[moltar]

Well, that's no different if someone finds your credit card, or gets your account information for the website :) The risk is always there, it just depends if you want to take it.

[Monksp]

Wow, was just thinking about how nice it would be to go to a show and sell some product....you know, get out of the house, but the thought of trying to set up credit card machine, worrry about wireless, phone line etc... Hrmm.... I might get to go outside!

[whoisgregg]

To clarify, they call you and you type in your PIN number to confirm each transaction.

So they would have to steal your phone and know your pin number. If you lose your phone, you can log in and change your pin, deactivate that number, OR just report it as being stolen.

Since you are only sending money to another Paypal account, I imagine a prompt report of a stolen phone would (based solely on my past experience with Paypal) cause all involved accounts to be frozen for six months for an "investigation" that results in the money being returned to your account and nothing else occuring.

[Philosopher]

Wow...the possiblities for this are pretty much endless.

With the right deals in place this opens the doors for any number of impulse type buys.

[beakertrail]

This is definately very interesting.

I run a website which uses SMS / text messaging for sending information and informing users. The users initiate the SMS messages and this is a logical step to include shopping in the same way users manage information.

[tntpower]

East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) has started to use mobile phone as a payment option long ago.

It is really very convenient to pay via mobile phone.

[miracle]

where does the funds get debited from when you send money?

[amznVibe]

Add the term "-outside" the info link in the first post and it will work alot easier without having to log into paypal or https:

[paypal.com...]

That trick works with most paypal info links. I posted about this earlier in the "ebay gets RSS [webmasterworld.com]" thread.

ebay/paypal lately is adding alot of new little features, seemingly to brace for Google's attack on their market with "Google Base" and "Google Payments". Competition is finally making ebay/paypal improve things, albeit trivial.

[forex]

PayPal goes mobile!
send and receive money via SMS

It's a good feature but I don't think its of importance to website sales. To make a purchase from a website the visitor has to browse the website, so the visitor will pay via website payment logo

[forex]

ebay/paypal lately is adding alot of new little features, seemingly to brace for Google's attack on their market with "Google Base" and "Google Payments".

Paypal cannot compete with "google payments". Many people ask "what is paypal" whereas every internet user knows google.

[mm1220]

Paypal cannot compete with "google payments". Many people ask "what is paypal" whereas every internet user knows google.

What? That's rubbish. Paypal is the market leader in handling financial transactions on the internet. Every internet user may have heard of google but how many do you think have heard of "google payments"?

The paypal payments system is integrated with eBay, the leading marketplace for buying and selling goods on the internet.

Try as it might Google won't be able to sweep all that away overnight.

[forex]

Every internet user may have heard of google but how many do you think have heard of "google payments"?

That's because google has been secretly testing "google payments" (googlebuy) for the past nine months & initially they plan private use for GoogleBuy. When introduce to all internet users, Paypal will be dethroned

[moltar]

forex, are you a G shareholder? :)

[forex]

Consider gmail. New users need invitation for registration. Some people consider gmail as a status for email accounts. Someone started a thread in a forum giving gmail invitation & it got lots of replies within hours.
When gmail registration starts without invitation almost every internet users will have gmail

[pontifex]

Just to give honor to the people, who introduced that first:

textpayme

introduced that service earlier than paypal, but i guess it will be hard for them to compete with that war chest and marketing power...

P!

[edited by: lorax at 1:34 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2006]
[edit reason] no need for DN workaround [/edit]

[Joeller]

I am not so impressed with this. You still have to create a paypal account!

From my experience (in Europe) it works incredible good if the users don't have to register. Without a complicated registration this really would rock far more.

J.

[forex]

Just to give honor to the people, who introduced that first:

To my knowledge, the federal authorities introduced electronic payment system

"Internet" was invented by the military in 1969 but now "Internet" has been commercialized.

[forex]

forex, are you a G shareholder?

No

[shigamoto]

They talked a lot about this during the late 90s. Mobile commerce would be the next big thing they said. So far it has not been that successful but maybe PayPal will lead the way.

I for one think it´s a great idea, perhaps PayPal will be able to attract new customers that wouldn´t use the service otherwise. In the long run that means new customers for businesses using PayPal.

[Bidera]

Kind of feel bad for those textpayme people, who are basically irrelevant now because of the mighty reach of Paypal/eBay .

But that is the danger of having a small startup and not having grown big enough before the big guys can claim the invention/advance as their own.

[spica42]

I'm not so sure how this works for a merchant. Is there anyway for a merchent to sign up? Where and how?

[pp_rb]

If you activate your phone with PayPal Mobile, then other people can pay you by text message. For example, they can text "send 9.99 to 4150001234 for DVD" and the payment will go to the PayPal account on which that phone number has been activated.

[spica42]

Then this service is only availiable for people in the states?