Paybox mpayment going belly up

another alternative e-payment hope shattered

[heini]

Paybox was probably the most promising alternative solution for e-payment in Europe. Deutsche Bank, Europe's largest banking concern was the major shareholder.
Now the german based company retreats to providing enterprise solutions. Paybox, the payment solution used by Ebay among others, is dead.
The idea behind Paybox was to marry the mobile phone craziness in Europe with e-payment to fill the gap opened by low usage of credit cards in many European countries.
According to dpa, the service had 900 000 active users, a ridiculous number compared to the hundreds of millions mobile phones in use. Paybox failed to accumulate critical mass.

Some countries, like Austria or Spain try to continue the service with new owners.
By and large however this very likely means the end to any alternative solutions for the European market. Good news for credit card institutes, good news also for Paypal, I suppose. Not so good news for European e-commerce.

[louponne]

I know paybox as an on-line payment solution - I didn't even know that they were working on mobile payment solutions. Are you saying that their on-line payment system is also dead? Their site is certainly not indicating any change...

[starec]

paybox had a very agressive start, they were willing to pay 5 euros for each new user in the beginning...

But their registration process was such a nightmare their slow growth and eventual failure does not surprise me much.

Heini, can you give us more details?

[heini]

Well, what I know is Deutsche Bank pulled out of the deal. They handled all the transaction backend. The system worked with a PIN, enabling customers to make a payment via ther mobile phone.
Paybox mpayment was accepted at many major ecommerce sites like ebay or BOL.
The paybox site however claims business goes on. The company intends to provide the technology to partners willing to maintain this payment system, like the austrian mobilkom.
We'll see. I don't see any other major attempt at mobile payment anytime soon.