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PayPal Brings Mobile Payments To U.S.
An anonymous reader writes "PayPal is bringing the eastern use of the cellphone as a payment method to the United States. The company's mobile service aims to use secure text messages as a payment method for direct-marketing initiatives and other 'on-the-spot' mercantile opportunities." From the article: "To the extent that digital money doesn't feel like real money, it may increase spontaneous purchasing ... " This story offers more details on a discussion we had last month.
Now I can fall victim to a phishing scam anywhere
This is a logicalextension of paypal's increasingly omnipresent marketing and services.
Paypal has diversified into many diferent branches and while this new mobile payment may be subject to some criticism and a degree of scepticism it is likely that this will come to be as pervasive as credit cards.
No parent will buy a cellphone to their kid unless the feature is disabled.
If you send a text message to GOOGL with the barcode number, it will return comparison shopping information. Unfortunately, in America everything is cheaper online, so there's no real point in going shopping anyway.
My other car is first.
What a sensational business model.
1) Act and charge like a real bank, but don't say you're one.
2) Offer no real customer service, treat customers like thieves, offer no financial protection, unlike a real bank don't be forced to implement security and continity controls
3) Profit!
TextPayMe already provides this exact same service. I wonder if they have a patent on it.
so far the only thing they seem to be pushing is cd/dvd sales -- how the hell could it possibly be convenient to buy a cd via paypal via phone? why would i want to send a text message, and then receive a call in order to find out the price and shipping?
if i want music, i want it now, so if i'm shopping i will buy it at the campus music store, or if i am home i will buy it on itunes. the only time i buy cd's online at all are when they are not on itunes or at the cd store.
there's still hope though!
what if i could buy my movie tickets on my phone instead of waiting in line at the theater? that would actually be cool.
-- lol pwned
So now after the hookers done, all I got to do is text her?
We'll call it Pay4Pal.
$sig$
That's not really true, Paypal only charges fees on credit card transactions and the fees they charge are reasonably well in line with what other credit card gateways charge merchants when you purchase something from them with a credit card.
Whether the fees charged by credit card gateways are too much is another matter, and seems like it might be the case. I seem to recall class-action suits being brought against Mastercard by merchants because they felt the fees they charged were unjustified.
The fact of the matter though, is that although as a consumer you generally don't realize it, merchants always take a hit on credit sales and it's not always small. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about paypal and I don't see this as being one.
This problem has been solved years ago and the average mobile phone is more than capable of working as an electronic purse. A mobile phone needs no centralized network to process transactions and most certainly is more efficient and trackable than paper currency and Visa/MC association payments.
A tangentially related way to see how abusive things are in the association world is Walmart wants to open a "bank" so they can keep a piece of the Visa/MC Association rent.
The way this will be implemented will be the same old very inefficient way of processing payments with each company in the "chain" demanding their pound of flesh along the way.
This idea is DOA.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You seem cynical. Perhaps you don't have enough money.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'd like to take the word tonight to whine about PayPal not supporting my country, Bulgaria.
Every time I see a PayPal donate / purchase button I'm automatically filtered out since they just don't support my country and declineto accept my credit cards if I try to sign up.
For what is considered the most popular micropayments system in the world, they'd do better to hurry up and actually support the world..
An automatic system makes a voice call to your phone after you have texted "send 14.99 to 2125551212" to 729725 ((PAYPAL)) and you touch-tone back a PIN which you set up when you activated the PayPal Mobile service. So the phone thief would need your PIN, not just your phone.