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Verizon Set To Launch Mobile Payment Service
CWmike writes "Verizon Wireless announced on Monday that customers will soon be able to charge up to $25 a month in online purchases to their accounts. The service, based on technology created by Danal, will require text messaging-enabled phones, and that purchases be made from Verizon-approved online stores, which include game sites and social networks. It will require that customers click a BilltoMobile button during checkout from a participating online Web site. Users will be asked to input their mobile numbers and mobile billing zip codes for authentication. Once the user is authenticated, a one-time passcode will sent to his or her phone. The number is then input into the online checkout window. At that point, the transaction is complete and the charge will appear on the customer's monthly phone bill. GigaOm writes, 'If Verizon can get people accustomed to putting in their phone numbers instead of credit cards while shopping online, then it could own a critical element in building an application and services platform that spans the wired and wireless world ... Much like Apple has such a large stake in the mobile application and commerce space today because it has millions of credit cards in iTunes, Verizon could be expanding its own payments information for a similar goal.'"
A 25 dolla hooker :D
I'm not surprised.
Verizon: We never stop working you.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Verizon has found a way to get hordes of parents with pitch forks and torches to come to their corporate offices and gruesomely kill them.
You notice they start at with a $25 limit? How convenient. Scam sites like those who conspired with Zynga (Mafia Wars & Farmville) have been scamming by getting people to subscribe via the text messaging service. Now Verizon is basically expanding that by allowing POS purchases in addition to monthly subscription fees and per text billing through messaging.
It really is the parents who will get screwed with this and go more insane at Verizon (and other carriers) when their kids get stupid or scammed into making purchases via their phones. Most adults are not subscribing to the ridiculous, and more importantly, misleading offers that make money by nailing you with subscription fees through the text messaging system.
Lol. Seriously? Will someone not think of the children??
I try to set up a separate email address for each vendor to communicate with, so I know how spammers got it. It's bad enough that Paypal insists on disclosing my payment address to the vendor for routine transactions (it should disclose it only in the event of a formally registered dispute) so I get spammed to my Paypal address. Giving online retail sites my private cellular number that can accept text messages is just about the last thing I'd allow. When I have to give a phone number to a vendor, I give a 24/7 voice mail number that emails me a .wav file of the voice message.
I do have a hell of a lot of prepaid Verizon mobile minutes but I doubt this scheme would let me use them to buy stuff online.
...I recall paying for stuff from vending machines with my phone in 2000. And since then for everything from tram tickets to premium content on web sites.
Since this is such a simple thing to implement I'm very surprised, if you indeed haven't had it before on the other side of the pond.
Sounds complicated. Entering received passcodes? Whatever happened to entering your credit card number? Wonder if it's opt-in, otherwise parents are going to love this.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Bold faced lie. 2000? Not a chance.
Mod this one up for Humor.
So what prevents me from charging this to someone else's number? Sounds like all I would need is number and name (which I get anyway if I get the number)?
No, 2000 sounds about right. There were SMS payment systems in place in the UK before I moved to the States in 2001 and was nauseated* by the state of mobile telephony here.
[*] I exaggerate for comic effect - I really don't care enough about mobile phones to feel sick at their poor state in, ahem, the States, but it was shockingly backward then.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
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I've used this technology (or a local variant) to pay for metered parking in Christchurch City. The parking meters in the CBD all have a "pay by mobile" option; it displays a code on the meter and you text it to a service number (eg, 4267).
They charge you 50c for the privilege of having it billed to your mobile account though :-(.
One of the nice things though, is that it works across all the mobile networks here (Vodafone, Telecom, 2Degrees, Telstra).
I know they had them at Eircell (since assimilated into vodafone) in 2000 or possibly even 1999 but had to get rid of them because employees who had their bill paid by the companies were using them too much.
I dont get it, how can this be news? This has been around for 5 years in most countries. My site has this implemented in Europe, and US already?
2000 is entirely plausible. Sonera installed the first set of mobile enabled vending machines selling Coca-Cola at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in 1997. Read the Background section at the bottom of this 2002 article
So in these other counties that already have it, can you describe what you have like this? I'd like to know do these systems tend to support more than one wireless carrier? Do they try for exclusivity with vendors? Are there caps like this $25/month? Are they opt-in? Does the vendor of a good/service have to pay a surcharge over what a merchant credit account would do? I guess I could search on it a bit but I also like the idea of getting some spontaneous information here.
I think this is a pretty good idea. There are a lot of people who are unable to make online purchases - they can't get plastic for a variety of reasons, same with PayPal - and it can be a serious disadvantage.
The only problem I envisage is children spending money they shouldn't, and parents having to foot the bill. The $25 limit is one way to tackle this; another would be to make it an opt-in service that can be authorized only by an adult; maybe even limiting the service to prepay (pay as you go) accounts, so it is impossible to spend money you don't already have in the account, similar to how a debit card works. But I can't imagine the cellphone companies will want to erect too many hoops for their customers to jump through.
Incidentally, this isn't a completely new idea. O2 in the UK have something similar called Cash Manager, and Vodafone in Egypt have Vodafone Cash. I'm sure there are other examples too. But these are more on the lines of debit cards that are linked to the phone account. However, I do have a vague memory of something like this being set up in the UK, by Vodafone I think. A quick google didn't turn up anything about it, though I'm sure someone else will be more successful in hunting for a reference.
http://ihatehate.wordpress.com
because I really like the straight-forward, easy to understand, error-free billing system that Verizon Wireless has.
Really, what idiot would trust them with this? Hey - what's this $4.59 "service access charge" that's tacked onto my $10 order?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
$25 can't buy any worthwhile pr0n, so this will fail. Give me $500/month, and then we can start negotiations.
Even after the pr0n, any trip to Starbucks is over $25 easy.
I have never spent less than $25 at a dollar store.
I don't think I've quite hit my stride on one-liners with this one. I'll try again later after I visit a few >$25 Web sites.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Credit/debit cards were much more common in the United States than Europe in 2000. Mobile payments are great but not such a huge upgrade from card payments; it's revolutionary if you used cash, evolutionary if you used cards.
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a bit earlier. Around 1997 I can remember watching a program in the UK on how you could use your cell phone in Japan to pay for goods in a vending machine (see here), though I can't remember whether it was only in test phase. When I visited Australia in 2005 you could use your cell phone to pay for parking.
The truth is North America behind when it comes to what people can do with their cell phones. They are only now starting to catch up. I believe the Qualcomm CDMA / GSM divide wasn't helping things.
As for web sites with concrete dates that I could show you, C-mode appears to a compatible technology: http://eurotechnology.com/market_reports/imode/faq-cmode.shtml and that was field tested in 2001.
BTW As for what you can do with vending machines in Japan: http://www.photomann.com/japan/machines/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
1. established companies ( paypal - who recently released their mobile payment api )
2. companies who are invested by carriers ( zoompass - if you're canadian, they are funded by all three major carriers )
3. The old companies trying to get into the mobile sector ( visa and mastercard both have talked about entering the mobile payment platform )
4. other companies that have been around for a while already doing the same thing (obopay, etc).
You gotta sell yourself better than this verizon.
Finally (part of) the U.S. is catching up with the rest of the world with mobile payments. In Europe you can even pay your utility bills on the phone.
Wait a minute, now instead of needing to give online retailers a mailing address for them to send junk mail to (which isn't so bad as most of the time I am buying a physical item that needs to be shipped to a real address anyway), I would be giving them the phone number for a phone I regularly have on me? Who could have possibly thought this would be a good idea? It would make far more sense for identifier given to the retailer be some random unique number (like a credit card number), which the retailer would give to Verizon who would in turn use it to text the verification code to the user's cell phone (hopefully in a text with the amount which will be billed).
Centralization breaks the internet.
I assume Verizon will take their usual 60% cut...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I think that my title says everything of relevance.
From another article about this service:
"BilltoMobile aims to charge fees of less than 20 percent of a transaction. It does so by bypassing the short codes to connect directly with mobile carrier billing systems and their subscriber databases. It took a couple of years for BilltoMobile to create this system and to strike deals with U.S. carriers."
The incredible efficiency of modern telecom and computer systems continues to impress me. To imagine, they have managed to develop a system where they can take less then 20% of the transaction!
To think that we used to use cash for transactions.
Another sorry excuse for a cell provider. I've been going round and round with them ever since they bought out Alltel (I'm a former Alltel customer with an Alltel data plan). They can't seem to see the forest for the trees. Why should I put any faith in some new Idea they've come up with?
Like most other alternative online payment methods (*cough* Paypal *cough*), this one is a terrible deal for consumers.
In the US, especially after the Credit CARD Act of 2009, you get a huge array of benefits for using a credit card:
Anyone with less-than-awful credit can get a credit card with no annual fee and pay it off monthly, thus incurring no interest or fees ever. Just use it as more convenient cash, rather than as credit. You have to get a credit check for Verizon cell phone contracts in the US too, so the bar for a credit card is not too different from that for Verizon's payment system.
With Verizon's payment system, you get none of these as far as I can tell. Credit cards have gotten too competitive, and thus unprofitable for issuers, and so they've invented newer and sketchier payment options designed to lure gullible and disadvantaged consumers. Shameful.
My bicyles
Ive paid my parking tickets, cola from automatic machines, paid my pizzas, bus tickets and once even one a bong to my phone bill for years. Not to mention all pr0n which is available by paying to my mobile bill
And without limits, which is practically 100-200 euros.
Why bother setting up multiple accounts?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address#Sub-addressing