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Canada Telecoms Launch Mobile Payment Service

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the can-i-request-money-all-day dept.

GregDz11 writes to inform us that Canada's three main wireless companies will be launching a service that allows customers to send, request, and receive money via their mobile phones. "The service, called Zoompass, will be managed by Enstream, a joint venture the three carriers first established in 2005, when it was called Wireless Payment Services, to investigate the potential of mobile commerce. [...] Money can be drawn from an account the user sets up or from their credit card. Each withdrawal will cost 50 cents from the account, or 3.5 per cent of the transaction if from a credit card. (As a result, sending dollar amounts under $15 are actually cheaper to do using a credit card.)"

5 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. mobile is where it's at by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    some day I'm going to try to explain to my grandkids about how we carried around computers that needed their own bags, that weighed 'pounds!' and they'll laugh at something so absurd.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:mobile is where it's at by chebucto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bah!

      http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/

      Computers have entered new niches over time, but no format has ever gone out of use. Mainframes are still around, as are minicomputers, workstations, desktops, laptops, and subnotebooks. Even smartphones aren't anything terribly new, being just a combination of PDAs and cell phones.

      Rather, I think people will look back at our time and laugh at us for thinking that portable computers with full-sized keyboards would ever fall out of use :)

      --
      The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
  2. Overpriced by Bradmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would you pay $.50 to use this when transactions on credit cards and (some) debit cards are free?

  3. Trust issues... by greed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm having trouble thinking of an organization I trust less than Canada's telecoms companies to handle my money.

    Has Bell figured out how to deal with incorrect direct payment transactions? When it happened to me, I had to have my bank block all transactions originated from Bell. Bell couldn't figure out how to identify the account making the bad transactions on their own--they actually needed the "payment refused" bounces from the bank. (They've got check-digits on account numbers now, but can they fix a problem from their end yet?)

    A friend on Roger's discovered his phone had been cloned. The Roger's people thought that there was nothing odd about his phone being used in Toronto and in south Florida at the very same time. (The small claims judge did think that was odd.)

  4. Usual 2 problems: by Seth+Kriticos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1. They are too greedy and don't realise that only very few people would use the service at this rates, which effectively ruins the economy of scale calculations.

    2. You can't limit the debt you get, which increases the loss in cases of fraud. This should work like pre paid cards where loss is limited.