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PayPal Goes Mobile

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:14 PM
from the pay-on-the-go dept.
Portables The Almighty Buck
Stitch_Surfs writes "PayPal has gone mobile. MobileCrunch breaks the news (with images) of PayPal's (un) surprising move onto mobile phones. According to the site, money can be sent,received and goods purchased all via PayPal from your mobile phone."

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[+] PayPal Brings Mobile Payments To U.S. 130 comments
An anonymous reader writes "PayPal is bringing the eastern use of the cellphone as a payment method to the United States. The company's mobile service aims to use secure text messages as a payment method for direct-marketing initiatives and other 'on-the-spot' mercantile opportunities." From the article: "To the extent that digital money doesn't feel like real money, it may increase spontaneous purchasing ... " This story offers more details on a discussion we had last month.
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  • Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by turg (19864) * <turg.winston@org> on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:16PM (#14977820) Journal
    I signed up for PayPal when they first started. They started out as a service for beaming payments between Palm Pilots. You put money into your PayPal account from your credit card or bank account. Then you'd sync your Palm with your PayPal account and you could beam money (via IR) to/from other peoples' Palms. And, as a secondary feature, you could transfer money to other people's accounts on the web site too.

    Well, it turned out that the the secondary feature was the one that took off and the one that was originally the whole point eventually got dropped. So this is really just a return to their original concept from 8 years ago rather than some suprising new idea.

    • Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)

      by johnpaul191 (240105)
      as much as it was a novelty, it was great. it was incredibly dorky to be at a restaurant and have one person charge the meal on a credit card and everyone else to pull out their palm pilots and beam the card owner for their portion of the bill.

      i thought i
    • That was one of the things that I thought was cool about PayPal too. Unfortunately, by the time I got a PDA, they cancelled the service.
    • And given their latest business practices, it will take them 3-4 days to recover that money to a real bank account....

      • Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Informative)

        by silentbozo (542534)
        Before it was "paypal" wasn't it X.com?

        No. X.com was a banking service that was later merged with Paypal. Paypal existed for processing payments before X.com was absorbed. I know this because I had accounts with both, and after X.com was taken over, th

  • Strip clubs... (Score:4, Funny)

    by poopie (35416) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:18PM (#14977828) Journal
    Great - no need to use my ATM card at strip clubs anymore.

    Oh, wait... at least with my ATM card, I'm limited to *TWO* days maximum withdrawls for monetary damage (max out before midnight, max out after midnight).
  • Info from the PayPal site, since there's only a screen capture at mobilecrunch:

    How do I activate my phone to send and receive mobile payments?
    You can activate your phone for use with PayPal by following these steps:

    Here's How:

    Go to https://w [paypal.com]
  • Hmm, I couldn't find any mentions of passwords.

  • Mobile sounds well and good, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MasJ (594702) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:20PM (#14977839) Homepage
    Well, Paypal on the go sounds pretty good, it's an alternative to putting your credit card number in over a mobile network, and sounds much safer. However, how many people here feel that this would open up an entire audience of really susceptible users to phishing scams ?

    Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam.

    • Re:Mobile sounds well and good, but.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by AuMatar (183847) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @11:05PM (#14978008)
      Credit cards are issued by banks and have strict federal regulation. Paypal is NOT a bank, as decided by a federal court, and is under no regulation. I'd rather use a credit card.
      [ Parent ]

    • Re:Mobile sounds well and good, but.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam."

      Techni
  • Well, if I use this, I'll be sure to put my phone on lock mode. I never really felt the need before, since it's a small hassle to punch in the pass every time I want to use it, but I'm sure I'll lose it somewhere at some point.

    Looks like it could be handy,

  • Cool, but I'm still nervous about the firm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CRCulver (715279) <crculver@christopherculver.com> on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:25PM (#14977866) Homepage

    Until Paypal address the issues presented by PaypalSucks [paypalsucks.com] and similar sites, I'm going to continue to feel disillusioned about what was once the cat's pajamas.

    But anyway, looks like O'Reilly will need to update Paypal Hacks [amazon.com] with information on this new mobile device support. The 2004 edition is getting noticeably out-of-date.

    • PaypalSucks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Poromenos1 (830658)
      After reading that site and a few stories of users that have had their accounts locked by PayPal, I'm convinced that that is no rare phenomenon and I try to avoid using PayPal as much as I can.

      I am eagerly looking forward to an alternative like GBuy (is it

  • Um... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AWhiteFlame (928642) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:27PM (#14977878) Homepage
    I don't recall ever having the need to pay something with credit card on my phone. If I'm there, and I have my phone, why not just..er...pay with a credit card? Its not like I'll be ebaying on an 1 1/2" screen... Am I missing something?

  • PayPal already has a mobile (WAP) interface... (Score:5, Informative)

    by nxtw (866177) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:32PM (#14977898)
    PayPal has had a mobile interface for years, via WAP.
    http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/mob ile-outside [paypal.com]

  • Are you freakin' kidding me? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mrshowtime (562809) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:33PM (#14977901)
    Paypal has a hard on for "limiting" account access for just about any reason today. Does anyone see the nightmare of trying to use paypal on a mobile phone? You had might as well call paypal and ask them to suspend your account, because 10 seconds after you sign up for "paypal mobile" your paypal account will suddenly have "suspicious" activity (you actually using it)and will be limited for "your" protection. Paypal limited my account access when I was using my paypal debit card out of state (one state over) to buy GAS. It was just ONE transaction and -that- triggered their fraud flags?! Maybe if google was doing this, but paypal, forget it.

  • TextPayMe? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MostlyHarmless (75501) <artdent@@@freeshell...org> on Wednesday March 22 2006, @10:40PM (#14977920)
    It sounds like they're placing themselves squarely as the 800-pound-gorilla against TextPayMe [textpayme.com] -- one of the Y Combinator [ycombinator.com]-funded startups. This may be interesting for both parties.

  • Muggers (Score:2)

    by foqn1bo (519064)
    This is going to be a boon for tech-savvy thugs. Now you don't even have to lead a guy to his ATM at gunpoint anymore.

  • Number spoofing risk? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tokengeekgrrl (105602) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @11:07PM (#14978020)
    Cell phone traffic isn't encrypted, is it? Couldn't someone spoof someone else's phone number and have them send money to them and then they disable the account as soon as they've collected?

    When you consider the lengths that identity thieves and phishing scams will go to, it's not completely unfeasible.

    But I could be completely on crack so if what I'm saying is completely ludicrous, please disregard.

    - tokengeekgrrl

  • Why not? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf (665390) on Wednesday March 22 2006, @11:21PM (#14978090) Homepage
    PayPal has gone mobile.

    Why not. Everything else about my cell phone is designed to suck money out of my wallet.

  • Direct Linkage (Score:4, Informative)

    by RickPartin (892479) * on Wednesday March 22 2006, @11:46PM (#14978190) Homepage
    Please Slashdot link to the article and not the front page KTHX. Here is the direct link for people reading this in the future. http://mobilecrunch.com/2006/03/22/paypal-goes-mob ile/ [mobilecrunch.com]

    • Re:I don't get this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kwiqsilver (585008)
      You can buy things today with your phone (like ring tones, wallpaper, etc). The problem is the phone carriers charge 20%-40%. Paypal charges a tenth of that, so the companies can either make more profit or lower their prices.
      Also, PayPal will allow you to
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