TextPayMe is coming out of beta on a SMS payment service (U.S. only) that allows anyone to send money to anyone else via cell phone. You simply sms the payment to another phone number.
For example, to send $15.27 to a friend with mobile number (206) 555-1234, you would text “PAY 15.27 2065551234″ to SMS@TextPayMe.com.
The service is currently free, and they are giving every new user $5 to sign up (this really reminds me of the early days with paypal, where they also gave $5 for every new signup and you could beam payments between Palm Pilots).
Your TextPayMe account can be tied to your bank account for moving money into and out of the virtual account. You can also give TextPayMe your credit card for “overdraft” payments.
It looks like they will eventually charge for transactions, but the service is free for now.
Before everyone gets too excited about TextPayMe, note that PayPal is launching something similar, called “PayPal Mobile”.
What would be ideal is if this was picked up by the cell phone service providers, and payments were simply credited or debited from your phone bill. I’d also like to see something like this partnered with BillMonk.
To test the service, sign up for an account and sms $5 to my cell phone. 
Micheal,
But mobile based payments are there in this side of the planet,in Asia. If you look into Japan, where NTT DoCoMo provides a complete mobile gateway for payments and purchases. Korea also does similar services. Being in India, we are already testing with choclate vending machines with mobile. Maybe I am unsure about the status of US.
Naraih - well good for you, but we don’t have it here yet.
Interesting service (I liked the paypal palm transfer too), but and it’s a big BUT, buried in the EUL is this:
“Credit Report. You agree that TextPayMe may order and review your credit report with the sole purpose of assessing your fitness to hold a TextPayMe account and/or your ability to use the Service or features thereof.”
This should give anyone a bit of pause, credit checks can impact your credit score and contain extremely sensitive information that you do not want to just anyone perusing.
There should be NO NEED for them to buried this in the contract and no need to do a credit report frankly since they give them selves 30 different ways out if your not covering your tabs.
You might want to follow up with them on this and see if they will alter their EUL or add some extensive clarification as to why they feel entitled to this information how the plan to protect it…
No dig, ur I mean no sign up for me (and I have very good credit), this is just to much a hot button.
Hey Griffon, I read on their blog or site that the clause was included by their lawyers and that they were planning on removing it. I don’t have a link and I’m not 100% sure, but yeah, until they do I’d be very careful doing business with them. Just send me the $5 and be done with it.
We have it even here, in Turkey.. I don’t think they can beat Paypal or the upcoming GoogleBuy services.. But what was your phone number? .)
Mike:
The service definitely is a good one and has proven extensively in EU and Asia, including the payments being added to the phone bills by the service providers. The credit report is a definitely red flag, though.
Btw, don’t you think that services like these diminish the needs for services like BillMonk?
Just a few observations:
1) May want to go to http://online.wsj.com/article/.....al_journal (subscription required) to read an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 8, 2006, titled, “Using Your Cellphone as a Credit Card”.
2) May prove useful to local buyers/sellers that use online classified websites. Local sellers could potentially cut down on packaging costs (and associated labor), returns, refunds, PayPal processing fees, etc. while local buyers could possibly acquire products quicker and potentially save money on shipping costs (i.e. buyer’s commute to/from a local seller’s premises may be faster than delivery via a courier and may cost less than shipping) relative to what local sellers/buyers currently encounter using EBay.
The obvious conclusion would be that this would be a service that the network providers provide and co-operate on so that billing is done on top of their standard phone billing (since they are really good at collecting money anyway).. in countries like the US where for whatever reason the networks have not reached out with such a service there will be a gap for providers such as TextPayMe
Also this is more effective as a consumer paying to a business service rather than a consumer to consumer service (that type of transaction doesn’t happen as often - I have seen cultures where it is extremely rare)
This is an excellent idea that would make it a cinch for friends to split the beer tab, etc. I agree with Vaibhav. This service would quickly undermine interesting startups like BillMonk but create a whole new class of new SW companies around the pay-by-phone theme. Interested to see how things shake out.
Sweet! Similar to ‘the checks in the mail’ … your $5 is floating through the air wirelessly somewhere as I type.
Cheers,
Frank
For PayPal, it’s forward to the past. If I remember properly, their original business proposition revolved around transfer of funds via phones/other mobile devices and Nokia was even one of their first-round investors and transferred their investment to PayPal via a Palm PDA back in ‘99: “On 7/23/99, Confinity made history at Buck’s by receiving its first-round financing from Nokia Ventures using Palm Pilots and Confinity’s PayPal software to do the funds transfer.”
(from: http://www.scripting.com/1999/07.html)
Not exactly the same thing, but for PayPal, getting this done will probably require nothing more than a dust buster.
Scott is correct. PayPal had this service on mobile devices in 1999 and discontinued active support of the mobile product in 2002. (Nobody used the product other than PayPal employees.) TextMe is a very bad idea, at least PayPal is leveraging a pre-exisiting set of assets. Google payments will almost certainly include this too.
This will be HUGE… PayPal tested the waters in 1999 when nobody needed it. This is a perfect example of expanding “Near Web” into the “Mobile Web” territory.
PayPal has their head so far up eBay’s ass that they won’t even see this coming… And then they’ll probably turn around and try to acquire.
Just remember, eBay was a “bad idea” when they first appeared…
now all of those lost cellphone in taxi cabs are like cash.
p.s. mike what’s your cellphone number…i promise not to use it for other reasons (fingers crossed)
Reading about this I had 3 reactions nearly simultaneously:
1) OOooh, cool tie in with Bill Monk! I don’t see this as a competitor, but something that could be used in conjunction with it. Bill Monk has nice shortcuts for dividing up the bill for you, and it would just pass the payment part to TextPayMe.
2) It’s like PayPal when it first launched. I loved the “beam” your money feature and used it all the time with my coworkers to split up lunch and other expenses. I even used it to transfer money to one of them to buy his old cellphone. It was handy, convenient, and cool. I was really disappointed when they discontinued the service.
3) Arrrgh! What’s to keep someone from grabbing your phone and texting all your money to their account?? It’s not like we keep phones password protected!
Taking a look at the site eased my concern a bit about the last one (you enter a PIN when it calls you back for confirmation), so I hope stuff like this takes off again… They need to get it working with stores and vending machines too and I won’t have to carry cash around anymore. I may wait for the PayPal or Google versions though.
>”a service that the network providers
>provide and co-operate on so that billing
>is done on top of their standard phone
>billing”
The carriers will be forced into this market eventually, but they probably arent excited about it. The already lose tons of cash to people who don’t pay their bills, and they’d have to cover these payments until the money sender pays their bill at the end of the month.
Conversely, an independent service like TextPayMe makes their money on the float — when you have cash in your account for a few days (or a few minutes) they’re collecting interest on it. The loss for each user is small, but all those pennies add up for the company.
It looks like the account isn’s FDIC insured, so if this goes the way of Flooz or Beanz we’re out of luck. They could also kill their reputation by failing to immediately release funds on request, as Paypal did within months of launching.
I really hope this works. The market for the US is still wide open. Paypal has the advantage of being big and old but they are totally beatable.
Google seems to have a 50% failure rate for new products (where failure = not becoming a top 3 contender) so their presence in the field is no reason to give up.
It’s time for some “bad” people to go back their basement and develope some cell viruses to “TextPayMe”,
We’re already using similar mobile payment and remittance services here in the Philippines for over a year now. You can actually pay groceries, food deliveries, send/share call and sms credits, send int’l remittances thru mobile phones.
Vaibhav - hi, I’m one of the Bill Monk founders. Regarding your question about whether TextPayMe is in the same space as BillMonk, see our recent blog post http://billmonk.wordpress.com/.....t-service/”
The two are different but potentially complimentary services. TextPayMe is a payments service, like a mobile PayPal. BillMonk does accounting, akin to a social Quicken with a mobile component. BillMonk solves the tracking and math problem: we split your bills, add up the bits and pieces, and generally help friends with money.
Roommates, for instance, love BillMonk because their problem is not paying one another, but tracking debts over time so they know how much to pay.
Sorry for the bad link: it should be:
http://billmonk.wordpress.com/.....t-service/
wow, this sould be a great way to make 40 bucks, which i really need badly right now
Now all we need is a company that will not charge the 10cent fee I pay for every sms message I send. But really, does anyone know who funded the company? Do the guys at paypal have already announced a product launch or are they looking for companies to acquire?
> For example, to send $15.27 to a friend with mobile number (206) 555-1234, you would text “PAY 15.27 2065551234″ to SMS@TextPayMe.com.
Don’t you have to type a password in the same message?
If not, then this is a very bud idea?
They always say things like “you can send money to ANYONE using this service!”
What they actually mean, though, is “go ahead and SEND money to anyone using this service, but since nobody else is using it you will be in effect just sending an ad for our service telling them to sign up, or else they won’t be able to GET the money you SENT them.”
Mike,
This is really stupid. You shouldn’t be asking for money to test your readership or as you say it, “the service.”
I know you’re sort of may be 1/4th kidding, but just because you have 24,000 readers doesn’t mean you should use the excuse of testing a service to ask for money.
>Mike,
>This is really stupid. You shouldn’t be asking for money to test your readership or as you say it, “the service.”
>I know you’re sort of may be 1/4th kidding, but just because you have 24,000 readers doesn’t mean you should use the excuse of testing a service to ask for money.
I think the only stupid thing he did is that he didn’t actually give his phone number.
#29…it…was…a…joke.
that’s why i didn’t give my cell phone.
i used it, it was pretty easy to do. I’d probley use it again, if paypal’s mobile isn’t better.
I’m curious to hear what you guys think of the LUUP service over in Europe.
We’re doing something similar to TextPayMe, but without any charges for P2P payments, and it works for merchant payments as well - both online and via SMS.
(we’re giving away £2 if you’d like to give it a try)
Now there is a mash-up extending paypal to the mobile - payzee.com
is textpayme out of business?