Obopay (password protected) is a Palo Alto start-up that boasts it will be the first service to allow customers to pay for just about anything with their mobile phones. The company is being coy with the details.
Obopay is working with carriers, merchants and financial institutions to bring to market the first comprehensive mwallet service offered directly to U.S. consumers," said Allen Beasley, Partner at Redpoint Ventures. "Using Obopay, consumers will have access to the fastest way to get, send and spend funds anywhere they choose right from their mobile phones.
In addition to enabling mobile payments, Obopay will allow users to instantly get cash from any ATM or spend it at millions of stores.
It was founded last year, and its executive team members have worked at places like Visa, Western Union and Chordiant Software.
4 comments:
Primate all I can say is that this service is already live with Globe Telecom in the Philipines and MTN in South Africa. Both services are partnerships between mobile networks, government and retail banks. The key driver for service uptake is that the majority of customers are on prepaid accounts, and that the service is used as an alternative to Western Union.
Not sure if this american firm could work in an environment that has multiple credit cards etc. Others also trying peer-to-peer money services are LUUP who presented at the February MoMo in London.
digital evangelist: how do you know if Globe Telecom or MTN are doing what Obopay plans to do. Oboplay doesn't say what they are doing.
a report on mPayment initiatives in Philipines and South Africa can be found in the IFC report published Jan 2006
http://www.infodev.org/files/3014_file_infoDev.Report_m_Commerce_January.2006.pdf
Regards
Amol Natu
What Obopay is doing is a mobile payments java application linked to a prepaid debit card. Think of it as Paypal to go with a mandatory debit card, except that unlike the recently announced Paypal Mobile, Obopay is an app, it doesn't rely on SMS messaging to send payments.
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