The Wall Street Journal report that the race is on to develop new payment systems and to percentage points in fees from each transaction.
“A lot of big players with big bucks are investing a lot of money in this,” said J. Gerry Purdy, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. “We know it’s going to be there,” he said of the technology. “The question is how to make it easy for people.”
Here are some recent examples:
1. Obopay lets you send money via text message.
It raised $35 million from Nokia’s investment arm in March. That was the single largest investment in a financial services start-up this year, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
2. MasterCard has introduced a service called MoneySend that uses some of Obopay’s technology.
3. A mobile payments start-up, Boku, received $13 million in venture capital financing.
Boku, which is the product of a merger of the start-ups Paymo and Mobillcash, says it views itself as the mobile phone’s answer to MasterCard or Visa. But instead of relying on credit card numbers, Boku asks users to type in their phone numbers.
Obopay has raised $104 million from investors including Nokia; the investment firm of James D. Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank; and Citigroup, which uses Obopay to run its mobile payment service. PayPal, which is owned by eBay, is promoting its own mobile tools.
More at Wall Street Journal http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/22pay.html?_r=1
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