PayPal Prepares For Mobile Payment Launch

News that PayPal is conducting internal trials using SMS for P2P payments in the USA, Canada, and the UK has slipped out.

Funds can be transferred from a PayPal account by either sending a text message or calling an automated voice system.

Having first registered and validated the phone with PayPal, to transfer funds users simply send an SMS with the amount and recipient’s phone number to 62226. For example: send 10.50 to 07950001234

Shortly afterwards, the sender is then called back by the PayPal IVR system to review and confirm the payment by entering the PayPal PIN.

A brief note can even be included with a payment text message that will be sent on to the recipient by adding the keyword “note” at the end of the message followed by the message. For example: send 10.99 to 0712345678 note thx for dinn

Text to Buy

As well as for sending money to someone else, the service will also be aimed at businesses wanting to sell products. This approach will have many advantages over reverse billed SMS as not only will the operator not be taking a large slice of the transaction, but both vendor and customer will have a verifiable audit trail for purchases made.

When buying items that need to be delivered, it won’t be necessary for the user to use their phone to type in their address details, with all the potential for error and shortage of space in an SMS. To send the information stored in your PayPal account to the vendor, include “share address”, “share phone”, “share info” and your address or phone number is sent to the recipient.

The vendors that will be available when the service goes live have not been announced yet.

PayPal is not charging to send payments by phone, or to receive payments into a PayPal Personal account. However PayPal Business account holders will be charged the standard rates for receiving payments into the account.

With what are thought to be 10 million user accounts in the UK and 100 million PayPal accounts worldwide, they have the user base to introduce a new dimension into the world of mobile payments.

Tags: IVR, Mobile Commerce, PayPal, Premium Services, SMS

This entry was posted on March 27th, 2006 and is filed under Brands, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.