Paypal to Offer Cell Phone Payment Services
March 24th, 2006
Paypal, the world's leader in online
payment services has today announced it is working on
a service that will allow everyday consumers to send payments
or money transfers via SMS messages on their cell phones.
This service will be known as Paypal Mobile and will be
offered in North America & Britain within the next
few weeks. Not only that, the company plans to offer this
service to over 55 countries where Paypal is currently
used.
Sucharita Mulpuru, senior analyst at
Forrester Research quotes, "This is very elementary
right now. PayPal is testing it out from the peer-to-peer
channel to see if it will work and gain consumer traction."
In order to transfer money to virtually
anyone via a cell phone, customers will dial an automated
customer service system telephone line and use touch-tone
voice commands to communicate with the system. Here's
how it will work:
- Paypal quotes on its website, "Buy
it when you see it. Where you see 'Text to Buy' -- on
a poster, in a magazine, at an event -- just order the
item securely by text message." Take for an example,
you see an ad for a new playstation CD that says "To
order this CD, please Text CD to 35426."
- A few seconds after this is done,
Paypal will automatically call back the customer to confirm
the order. The customer then has to enter his Paypal Mobile
Pin # to verify for security reasons. If this process
goes smooth, the CD will then be shipped to the home address
of the person's Paypal account.
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