PayPal officially took the wraps off its PayPal Mobile service today at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas. The new SMS-based payment service has already attracted several high-level merchants, such as MTV and Fox Home Entertainment.
PayPal Mobile gives PayPal users the ability to make purchases and deliver payments wirelessly. The service consists of three options: peer-to-peer payments; text-to-buy; and text-to-give.
The person-to-person option gives wireless customers the ability to make payments to friends and family, while text-to-give allows users to make charitable donations using their wireless phone. PayPal has already set up the text-to-give service with Amnesty International, UNICEF and other charitable organizations.
The text-to-buy feature is the crux of the new service, which gets back to PayPal's roots, says Kevin Dulsky, PayPal's senior director of strategic global business strategies, who notes PayPal started out by allowing money transfers between Palm Pilots.
The text-to-buy component of the service, creates point of sell opportunities and allows customers who make a purchase decision to immediately buy a product by sending a text message. "Our users are active e-commerce users," says Dulsky.
Merchants also are excited about the service, according to Dulsky, who says, the service offers a new channel for merchants to start a dialogue directly with consumers. "Merchants are excited to go directly to (mobile) consumers," he says.
Besides the above-mentioned MTV and Fox Home Entertainment, PayPal Mobile services also are being offered by Bravo, the NBA Store. Dulsky says the company expects to sign up additional merchants in the coming months.
The company spent the last several weeks conducting an internal beta test with eBay employees worldwide, which according to Dulsky went very well. "(The internal test) gave us an opportunity to test in multiple countries," he says, over a variety of handset types.
The mobile PayPal service is available to registered online PayPal users.
All payments, purchases or charitable donations made via the service will be verified by PayPal using a customer's secure PIN before funds are released. PayPal hit the 100 million-account mark in February.