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PayPal Goes Mobile

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pay-on-the-go dept.

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."

6 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising by turg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Not surprising by johnpaul191 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      as much as it was a novelty, it was great. it was incredibly dorky to be at a restaurant and have one person charge the meal on a credit card and everyone else to pull out their palm pilots and beam the card owner for their portion of the bill.

      i thought i heard there was some issue with security, or people not hot syncing enough or something that helped end the Palm based payment fun?

  2. Cool, but I'm still nervous about the firm by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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 The 2004 edition is getting noticeably out-of-date.

  3. PaypalSucks by Poromenos1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  4. TextPayMe? by MostlyHarmless · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  5. Number spoofing risk? by tokengeekgrrl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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