Slashdot Mirror
Canada Telecoms Launch Mobile Payment Service
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.)"
Why would you pay $.50 to use this when transactions on credit cards and (some) debit cards are free?
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.)
FTA:
My wallet has been mobile for years already...