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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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
You can buy things today with your phone (like ring tones, wallpaper, etc). The problem is the phone carriers charge 20%-40%. Paypal charges a tenth of that, so the companies can either make more profit or lower their prices.
Also, PayPal will allow you to buy all sorts of products, and it will handle the ordering, payment, and shipping, all you have to do is read the confirmation emails.
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/