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TextPayMe
By Sparky | December 11, 2005
There is a cool new service called TextPayMe that I just found out about. It’s similar to PayPal but is based on SMS/cell phone technology. Once you get all your friends signed up you can send each other money free by sending an SMS to TextPayMe with an amount and the recipients phone number. They then do a callback and have you type in a pin to authorize the transaction and *poof* your friend has money in their bank account. It sounds handy for paying for lunches, or paying your half of a round of drinks or something.
Click here to sign up and get $5.00 free from them. I kind of have to wonder how they are paying for all this. It does not look like a spam based service, so once they leave beta mode they might start charging to send money.
They are trying to get merchants in on the action and I would love it if this takes off. Being able to walk into a store and pay by typing an amount into my cell phone and clicking send.
Topics: Technology, Web gems |
December 11th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
To bad most phones store your sent SMS messages on your phone. Their statement that the PIN number eliminates unauthorized transactions doesn’t seem to be thought out very well as the average user is not going to delete every sent message they send w/ their pin number.
December 11th, 2005 at 8:04 pm
Actually it’s not as insecure as it sounds - you send an sms with the recipient and the amount, they place a voice call to your phone and you dial your PIN at their system. Your PIN number is kept safe because of the text/voice combo.
It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it sure seems handy. I’m actually kind of looking forward to at least getting some co-workers signed up to make lunch split payments 10x easier.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:34 am
TextPayMe looks like a copy of the SimPay system that flopped in Europe (combo SMS+Voice). I’ve seen another system from a company called Sapphire that’s like the really successful, all-SMS-based system used in the Philippines and the LUUP system in Europe. The company’s management includes a OSS KDE guy and one of the founders of the original MAC ATM network. They’re launching soon; I’ll post when I hear that they’re up.
By the way, it doesn’t matter if the PIN is stored on the phone since you need the phone AND the PIN to make any payments on the LUUP or philippine systems. If you’ve lost your phone you can easily suspend the account from another phone.
Besides, many people write their PINs on their ATM Cards!