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PayPal Goes Mobile
Stitch_Surfs writes "PayPal has gone mobile. MobileCrunch breaks the news (with images) of PayPal's (un) surprising move onto mobile phones. According to the site, money can be sent,received and goods purchased all via PayPal from your mobile phone."
I signed up for PayPal when they first started. They started out as a service for beaming payments between Palm Pilots. You put money into your PayPal account from your credit card or bank account. Then you'd sync your Palm with your PayPal account and you could beam money (via IR) to/from other peoples' Palms. And, as a secondary feature, you could transfer money to other people's accounts on the web site too.
Well, it turned out that the the secondary feature was the one that took off and the one that was originally the whole point eventually got dropped. So this is really just a return to their original concept from 8 years ago rather than some suprising new idea.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Why wouldn't you just have some sort of smartcard reader system that automatically charged the purchase to your phone bill?
Is this really needed?
Great - no need to use my ATM card at strip clubs anymore.
Oh, wait... at least with my ATM card, I'm limited to *TWO* days maximum withdrawls for monetary damage (max out before midnight, max out after midnight).
Info from the PayPal site, since there's only a screen capture at mobilecrunch:
How do I activate my phone to send and receive mobile payments?
You can activate your phone for use with PayPal by following these steps:
Here's How:
Go to https://www.paypal.com/mobile
Click the Activate button.
Log in to your PayPal account or sign up for a PayPal account.
Select or add a phone and create a mobile PIN.
Click Continue.
PayPal will call and prompt you to enter your mobile PIN to confirm that you have possession of your phone.
Hmm, I couldn't find any mentions of passwords.
Well, Paypal on the go sounds pretty good, it's an alternative to putting your credit card number in over a mobile network, and sounds much safer. However, how many people here feel that this would open up an entire audience of really susceptible users to phishing scams ?
Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam.
Well, if I use this, I'll be sure to put my phone on lock mode. I never really felt the need before, since it's a small hassle to punch in the pass every time I want to use it, but I'm sure I'll lose it somewhere at some point.
Looks like it could be handy, and there's a lot more info at the PayPal site, do a search for 'phone'.
Until Paypal address the issues presented by PaypalSucks and similar sites, I'm going to continue to feel disillusioned about what was once the cat's pajamas.
But anyway, looks like O'Reilly will need to update Paypal Hacks with information on this new mobile device support. The 2004 edition is getting noticeably out-of-date.
I don't recall ever having the need to pay something with credit card on my phone. If I'm there, and I have my phone, why not just..er...pay with a credit card? Its not like I'll be ebaying on an 1 1/2" screen... Am I missing something?
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
After reading that site and a few stories of users that have had their accounts locked by PayPal, I'm convinced that that is no rare phenomenon and I try to avoid using PayPal as much as I can.
I am eagerly looking forward to an alternative like GBuy (is it really?) so I can feel a bit safer making transactions on the web. Knowing that I might create something that finally allows me to make a decent bit of money only to have PayPal lock my account and take all of it isn't very reassuring.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
PayPal has had a mobile interface for years, via WAP.b ile-outside
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/mo
Paypal has a hard on for "limiting" account access for just about any reason today. Does anyone see the nightmare of trying to use paypal on a mobile phone? You had might as well call paypal and ask them to suspend your account, because 10 seconds after you sign up for "paypal mobile" your paypal account will suddenly have "suspicious" activity (you actually using it)and will be limited for "your" protection. Paypal limited my account access when I was using my paypal debit card out of state (one state over) to buy GAS. It was just ONE transaction and -that- triggered their fraud flags?! Maybe if google was doing this, but paypal, forget it.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Can I now pay my phone bill through PayPal?
It sounds like they're placing themselves squarely as the 800-pound-gorilla against TextPayMe -- one of the Y Combinator-funded startups. This may be interesting for both parties.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
This is going to be a boon for tech-savvy thugs. Now you don't even have to lead a guy to his ATM at gunpoint anymore.
Cell phone traffic isn't encrypted, is it? Couldn't someone spoof someone else's phone number and have them send money to them and then they disable the account as soon as they've collected?
When you consider the lengths that identity thieves and phishing scams will go to, it's not completely unfeasible.
But I could be completely on crack so if what I'm saying is completely ludicrous, please disregard.
- tokengeekgrrl
Using manual entry for cards is old news. Companies like Aircharge (Aircharge.com) have been doing it for 5+ years, and currently have serial swipers and printers that allow mobile card present transactions that offer better rates for companies. It also allows you to print out the reciept right there, add a tip, and print duplicates. This still may be useful for simple person to person transactions.
Just think, in a year or so local businesses might start supporting this, allowing you to pull out your phone and pay for goods, just like that!
Why not. Everything else about my cell phone is designed to suck money out of my wallet.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
TextPayMe has been doing the same thing for a while now and it works pretty well for me. Paypal has too many horror stories for me to want to use them. I'd prefer that they have some successful competitor that forces them to improve. They need successful competition in this mobile market place, otherwise it will become just like the online marketplace where their customer service suffers and they can lock accounts at will because, well, you don't really have many other options.
No PayPal for me, I'll be using TextPayMe instead and I suggest you do too.
If I remember correctly, you could pay with a mobile phone since 1998 in developed countries. I am pretty sure that teens in Czech Republic would laugh at the things you consider "new features" as something that surely existed before they had been born. The state of mobile market in US is indeed pathetic.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Please Slashdot link to the article and not the front page KTHX. Here is the direct link for people reading this in the future. http://mobilecrunch.com/2006/03/22/paypal-goes-mob ile/
If you haven't heard about the shady dealings of paypal, then you need to visit the website posted in the parent. A much more reliable and safe alternative can be found here.
But who knows. Maybe this'll get them in shape... at least enough to not fuck with people's money.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
What I would like to see is the ability to take a credit card for payment over the phone. There are some services that offer something similar... So, if I could say use the virtual terminal to have someone pay me for a transaction (think flea market or the like), or even call into a number and enter the payment info over the phone... that would be worth talking about.
The original PayPal was a Palm app, that let you beam money back and forth between your friends. Say bob picked up the bill, mary could beam 3 bucks to him to pick up her Latte. I think I have $5 of money beamed to me someplace i can't pick up.
The problem it was too clunky. You could get real money, but you'd have to have a computer, connected to the palm, and the internet. You'd upload your transactions, backing it with your credit card account.
Eventually PayPal learned that the clunkiest part was getting money in and out, whetehr or you had a Plam or not (making the accoutn was a small pain) so if you kept your money in the system, have all the small transactions just be virtual, until once a month get real money, you'd be on to something. and they made a hell of a lot of cash doing it. witht he new mobile technologies (1 bitdepth WAP phones, no java or other languages, were cutting edge then) i think they have a better shot at the interface problems now.
My friend two weeks ago had an issue where he did not receive $120.00 which was sent by someone who confirms that he sent it. A typical story of "Wtf PayPal didn't work..". Unlike what many fo those stories say, there is a phone number on the PayPal site to contact somebody to speak to (and not a machine). Idin't hear the whole conversation but basically the PayPal guy explained the steps to do in order to fix the problem and receive the money he should of had and he got it.
The point is that many of these stories are not up to date. PayPal has addressed to many of these issues. They just didn't directly say it. Customer Service is there. It's just a long wait on the phone, gotta listen to that boring music....
As for accounts freezing up. Well, you know. I just don't leave any money in my account. I transfer the exact amount and send it right away and never leave a penny. Wy should I? I wouldn't use PayPal as some sort of wallet.
... and that is that paypal simply sucks.
No, their service is kind of solid but...
You'll never want to be a merchant with paypal and get frauded/scammed or so forth... in fact, not as a customer neither. You'll never see your cash again... In fact, you'll never hear of customer support neither...
Oh yeah, and apparently "No one" gets the cash, in this case, the no one is Paypal.
(I've had this happen, somebody buys some stuff of me with stolen paypal info. This is shortly catched and paypal is informed etc. Cash is taken away from my paypal account, but never returned to the paypal account which WAS stolen, but control had been regained. Needless to say, i don't support paypal anymore, and their very high fees for nothing.)
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Paypal, biggest scammers on the net. They will steal you money at the drop of a hat and give you no indictions as when they will release funds. Hate these bastards.
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
Well, yes they are. But does it really matter? If the encryption is too difficult to break, then much easier ways exist [viruses, con artists, phishing, etc].. After all, nobody today downloads ringtones or plays games on their cell phone...
Besides, I remember hearing that the encryption was blatantly crippled with digital cell phones when they first came out. Not sure if anything was improved or not.
I don't like the idea of sending money with just a text message (SMS). We have built a fully working prototype using barcodes on mobile screens. The user has to enter a pin code in order to display his ID as a barcode that get scanned. In this case we're running a small shop. This is not a transaction from user to user but this can easily be adapted as long as there is a remote server using a data connection that handles the actual transaction. There are quite a few advantages to using an application: enhanced and uniform user interface, added security layers.
n t_index
For anyone interested in our prototype (for a small shop):
http://mobile.link-u.com/index.php?p=mobile_payme
Micropayments using cell phones is a great idea, but I see I'm not the only one who thinks Paypal's solution is an underwhelming mess, especially when much better solutions are right on the horizon. I've been beta testing a mobile money solution for a few weeks now from a startup called Obopay, and from what I've seen it's a much smarter solution than what TextPayMe offers, or even what Paypal is offering here. It's really all about creating a robust, simple to use solution, and using text messages for mobile payments is not it. The Obopay service I've been using has its own little java app that has simple menu commands like "Pay", "Request Pay" and "Check Balance" "See History" which creates a nice streamlined interface from which to send money around. The difference is like using a Windows or a Macintosh vs. DOS or a Command Line Interface. Having an application makes all of the difference in easy of use and utility. Combined with a linked debit card I can spend the money in my Obopay account anywhere that MasterCard is accepted, or take money from any ATM instally, as soon as someone sends me money. Also, the Obopay mobile application is perfect for someone like me who often sends medium sized increments of money around to people like my friends and family, but doesn't require me to use an ATM or hassle with carrying around cash. It's a lot like the Paypal web service, except you can access it anywhere you are and it doesn't have any of the clutter, it's just a simple pay and be paid service for my cell phone. I've already used this service to loan money to my mother-in-law (who is also a beta tester) as well as let my boyfriend pay the check at restaurants while I send him the exact amount for my half of the bill. I can really see this sort of thing revolutionizing the way I handle money, especially if enough people get onboard. I think that mobile payment services like Obopay's have a lot of potential to replace a good chunk transactions involving cash. At the very least it's going to put companies like Western Union out of business (who the heck wants to send money for a ridiculous fee from fixed locations when they can do it from their cell phones for practically nothing?), but I also think it's going to replace the vast majority of cash transactions since the cell phone is such a ubiquitous platform; literally everyone and their grandmother has a cell phone which is all you need to send/receive money instantly. Looking ahead, I'm glad I'll have my Obo phone with me when I go to Europe in a month since I won't need to freak out about getting emergency cash if I need it, I can just get my parents to send me money and I'll have it in my account seconds later.
Ha Now I see https://www.paypal.com/row/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/ cps/mobile/MobileFAQ (you may have to login)
"you can send money from your PayPal account to any phone number or email address within the U.S., Canada or the U.K."
Dear paypal. There are people living outside UK and US ..
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
"Dear paypal. There are people living outside UK and US"
yeah, there are also people living INSIDE uk/us/canada, what's your point?
Aside from the "under no obligation to offer a service" issue, do you have any idea how much work's involved in rolling out a service, worldwide, that's reliant on each different network operator in each country, all at once? Especially with the required security in place for this kind of service?
The fact that they'd want to try it in some places, monitor it's success, tune the service, before rolling out to other countries, seems pretty reasonable to me.
And no I'm not just saying that because I live in the UK myself, I don't use paypal, and have no need for this service.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
That definitely adds to their case... they need to sort out the basic service before offering new ones - if anything, for pure marketting reasons. If they released this service in india under those conditions, it would become known for it. If they sorted out the 28day thing first, /then/ released the service, it would become known as the new service without the bad name that it would have otherwise.
It doesn't seem that complicated to me.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Yes that brings us back to my original premise "Dear paypal..there are people living outside UK and USA too" When services like cash2india.xoom.com, westernunion and moneygram can offer moneytransfer within 48 hrs ..why paypal cannot do so ??
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
I don't know enough about those to answer that... perhaps they can link to banks in different ways because of the way they're regulated... perhaps paypal just aren't motivated enough, they're happy with what they offer where?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Mr Wave Theory thinks that there is a Bubble 2.0 for Web 2.0 and Most Analysts Are Overestimating the Size of Google's Total Addressable Market for Internet Advertising I am sick and tired of hearing analysts make wild projections about Google's growth prospects based on wild projections about the size of Google's total addressable market. Continued ...
http://mrwavetheory.blogspot.com/2006/03/bubble-2. html
Avoid paypal if you can. They are not a bank and so are not regulated in a way banks are. When signing up you basically agree that they can do with your money what they want, like freezing your account, fining you or whatever. Of course, they decide what surpicious activity is. I think a judge should decide if this is to be done, not some employee of paypal.
For example they held back a lot of donated money for Katrina victims:
Click
Key West though. . . the only rule is "don't put your fingers in my poon" . . . and they encourage you to squeeze their fake breasts. I lost hundreds of dollars finding that out, then "experimenting" with the rules. I should have just gone right for the poon and gotten banned for life.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I meant to verify that you are actually you, not someone who stole your phone/callerID/ESN etc ? I did not see it anywhere I looked so far. As we all know know, caller ID and ESN are just jokes in the hands of real hackers and can be duplicated without much effort if you have the right hardware. What will prevent this kind of activity of syphooning money out of your account with hacked cell phones or what kind of guarantee are they going to provide to the victims of such activity ??
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Spamcop.net is still free for reporting but it gives extra features when you pay, especially when you have mail account there.
I reported every single paypal phishing mail to Paypal. Paypal was even refusing them for sometime, they reenabled them.
As I have guts (in fact, since I use OS X) I kept on checking the sites I reported using report history feature. Even after a WEEK later, the phishing sites were well and alive asking for paypal account details.
98% of users has no sort of "sense of security" on Mobile platforms, just see what happens when Frisk tries to inform how dangerous Symbian malware could be. They are not taken serious, and even people claim they sell "snake oil." A company like F-Prot.. Sigh btw.
Yesterday I had a very suspicious "new net settings received" apparently from Turkcell, my mobile provider. As I know GPRS is mostly DHCP and I did not ask any kind of settings; I refused to install settings. I wonder what would "Joe Public" do.
With a company like PayPal who ignores FREE security reports which other companies pay for, I have major suspicion about this new invention and I am afraid if something happens, it will hurt sense of security on Mobile platform (J2ME).
This will be interesting! Perhaps finally an end to cold hard cash!
The gist of sending money from the phone appears to work like this:
1. You text message them or call an 800 number and tell the system to send money to another phone number.
2. The system calls you back and asks you for a PIN for confirmation. You put in the PIN.
3. Money gets sent.
Activating the service to work from your phone in the first place requires a) A paypal account, and b) for you to do the whole PIN confirmation thing once to get the idea of it and make sure that you have the phone and that they can contact you and so forth.
Of course, somebody could probably spoof a text message from you to send money to themselves, but it would then call you back and ask for your PIN to confirm.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Well, after seeing this article, I figured I'd try out their service. I have a business account with paypal (had a personal account for years, business account for less than 6 months) and I thought this would be easy enough to set up. I was wrong. The website portion was fine, I added a pin number for the confirmation call, the first 20 times I tried to get them to call me... nothing happened on my end. 21st time, the call came through but the quality was awful. Finally I tried again, and the calls started coming through properly. The problem now is that they won't accept my pin. I double-checked it, but no luck. So I changed the pin (wasn't too hard), and they didn't accept the new pin either! I changed it again, still didn't accept it! So I'm REALLY annoyed. It seems that PayPal really doesn't want me to use their new mobile service.
;)
I'm in Canada, and I don't know if anyone else has tried this service yet, but I'm tempted to email paypal letting them know how dissatisfied I am with it. Is it that hard to check an up-to-date database for the pin number I added? I've changed it 3 times, each call that came through, I tried all 3 pin numbers I had changed it to, and nothing worked. Not a single success.
Guess that's what I get for trusting PayPal.
"Pi is exactly 3!" *gasp*
If you already have a paypal account, just log into it and go to your profile. If you go to edit your phone numbers, there's an "Activate for payments" link beside it.
It's also important to note that you only have to activate to be able to SEND money to other people. If you have a paypal account, and have put in your phone number and such, then people can send payments to your number and it will know it is you. You may need to activate in order to receive the payment though.
Actually, from further reading, you can send money to any phone number. If the number is not in paypal's system, it will call the number and attempt to get them to sign up for a paypal account to receive the money, basically.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hey there. I authored the PayPal Hacks book. We hope to begin working on an updated version of the book. They have come a long way since its release, but it still should be some help to people just starting out. The advanced stuff is what is mostly outdated.
Thanks.
SS
PayPal is an international service, phone numbers don't mean much to me (a Greek). I'm not going to spend more money calling than I want to get, live chat/fast email support is the only think that works for me.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.