TextPayMe enables mobile-to-mobile fund transfers
posted December 11th 2005 4:00PM
You now have a new way to repay your debts with your cellphone other than letting people make calls on it until
you're out of hock, in the form of a new service called TextPayMe. Still in beta, the PayPal-like service allows a
debtor to sign up on the website, and once he/she has an account, send money to others via text messaging. After
selecting either a credit card or bank account as the source of funds, the user sends an SMS to TextPayMe with a mobile
number and dollar amount, and the company either cuts a check or deposits the loot in the recipient's bank account. For
security purposes, the service calls you back after you request a transaction and requires PIN verification, and also
requires some sort of vaguely-worded confirmation on the part of the recipient concerning a security phrase that is
sent to him/her. For now the service seems to be free, although it is unclear what the pricing model will look like
once the service leaves beta. TextPayMe is trying to get merchants onboard to accept this method of payment, but we
think it might flourish more as another way for purchasing services and conducting transactions in the so-called
underground economy, where it's not always safe to carry around large amounts of cash.
[Via picturephoning]
Pay pal is very big as we all know and everyone (or nearly everyone) has phones so TextPayMe can be very big indeed, I suppose we will just have to see in time.
Long overdue technology.. Better late than never.
i just hope they don't charge nearly so much as PayPal.
I'd just like to say, for a reason completely unrelated to this thread, PayPal blows.
This is kind of old news.
When I was in Europe I saw Cigarette vending machines that let you pay with your "handy." You simply called or sent a text message to the number on the machine indicated which product you wanted and it popped out, charging the cost to your cell phone bill. Man, hope you don't drunk dial these things...
Nothing really new except that it's in the US.
The Philippines has been implementing this for years now.
Ive seen this stuff for vending machines in australia. Pretty cool idea i must say, Very handy when you only have your phone on you but might kill the phone bill heh
Just signed up and paid $1 to my friend, seems pretty cool. Besides underground economy, I might use it to pay for my friends in clubs and bars, I don't like bringing my wallet to those places...
the peer to peer payment is a nice idea. I guess that's the differece between paying people and paying vending machines :D
This is really nothing new. Philippine cellular phone operators have this kind of service introduced 2 years ago- and their e-wallet functions are more sophisticated - you can actually use your phone to pay merchants too, not just send cash to other phone users.
we've been doing that here in the Philippines a long time ago. What's new with that?
late already, but no problem
Why is the U.S. always SO *$@#ing far behind in any new technology or innovation???
Very very cool. I signed up and sent a few dollars to my girlfriend. It is pretty easy.
I hate carrying cash and this will make it all the easier to split a dinner tab with other people (no worrying about change etc)
Same functionality, but more sofisticated solution in place in Europe, including merchants. See www.luup.com
I'm not really sure how useful this will turn out to be, but since they're giving away $5 just to sign up (anyone remember when paypal did that too?) it's worth trying.
yeah, this does look a lot like LUUP, the text payment solution in Europe - but LUUP works for buying ringtones and merchant payments too.
I bet they'll be doing the same PayPal cash giveaways too, so I'd keep my eyes peeled...
TextPayme's not exactly like LUUP or the philippines solution which are both entirely SMS based. I just saw a system from a company called Sapphire that is like those; quicker and easier to use. It's run by a group that includes a OSS KDE guru and one of the founders of the original MAC ATM network. Should be out soon...keep an eye out...