Menekse Gencer of PayPal blogs on the PayPal Blog about PayPal's mobile money transfer application now available on Sprint phones.

In an article titled "PayPal Launches Its First Mobile Service on a Downloadable Application", Digital Transactions reports that PayPal is one of the mobile payments offerings included in Sprint Nextel's MyMoneyManager application. Sprint Nextel says "think of it as a web browser where you add bookmarks to all of your financial services providers on your phone." The article quotes Menekse Gencer, director of business development PayPal’s mobile group: "Our intent is to make PayPal ubiquitous on the handset."

Curiously, over the weekend the second most popular article on Payments News was one written way back in late March of 2006 as the official launch of PayPal Mobile was nearing. The article, titled "PayPal in the Air! - A Look At PayPal Mobile", was written before PayPal's official launch of the mobile payments service - that happened a few weeks later on April 6, 2006. That was just over two years ago.   » Continue Reading

PayPal has announced the launch of Mobile Checkout, a service that allows consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada to buy items securely over the mobile web. According to PayPal, a consumer can visit a merchant’s website and purchase items by clicking on the PayPal button – all from the convenience of their mobile device. To try out PayPal Mobile Checkout, point your mobile phone's browser to http://mobile.paypal.com and click on 'buy something'.   » Continue Reading

The Mobile Money & Banking blog reports that mPoria has announced "a partnership with (mobile) payments giant PayPal. The deal will enable shoppers at m-commerce retailers using mPoria's GoMobile! store front to check out using their PayPal accounts."

PayPal today introduced PayPal Mobile Checkout - it gives merchants a way to support mobile checkout on their existing web sites by providing PayPal users a way to easily activate and enroll to make online purchases from their mobile phones. Details here.

Last week, Facebook launched a new polling capability - allowing simple polls to be setup and conducted across its membership base. Mike Arrington covered the launch of Facebook Polls on his TechCrunch blog, calling it a "marketing research paradise." Last night, we gave Facebook Polls a trial run - setting up a poll that asked a sample of 200 18-25 year olds on Facebook whether they had ever used PayPal Mobile to send money to friends. This results aren't very scientific - but still interesting and fun. You can view the results of the poll here. This poll cost $25 to run - $5 to set it up and $0.10 per response for 200 responses.

Business Week takes a look at mobile banking and payments - including Citibank's pilot with Obopay, PayPal Mobile, Firethorn and First Data's efforts including last week's investment in VIVOtech.

Gemma Simpson reports for the UK's Silicon.com about a mobile payments trial recently conducted by the London club Minstry of Sound using PayPal Mobile to provide end-to-end mobile ticketing with "clubbers able to buy, receive and redeem tickets on their [mobile] phones."

Mark Schwanhausser writes for the San Jose Mercury News about mobile payments - saying that "eventually Americans will be able to choose among high-tech alternatives that will transform how they shop, pay for goods, borrow money, dole out allowances, transfer cash around the globe and manage their finances." Schwanhausser reports that San Francisco "Bay Area companies are playing influential roles mapping the way, from old-school titans such as Wells Fargo and Visa USA to New Economy ventures such as PayPal, Obopay and Yodlee." In a sidebar, Schwanhausser takes a look at some of the experiments underway.

UK-based mobile entertainment and solutions provider Mowave has launched a new mobile service with PayPal that will allow readers of Maxim and Stuff magazines to purchase a range of products, such as subscriptions and electronics, simply by sending a text message from their mobile phone. The service, which utilizes PayPal’s new “Text to Buy” platform, marks the first time that UK publications have implemented a mobile payment system to process subscriptions or purchases of goods.   » Continue Reading

Eric Lai writes for ComputerWorld about the state of mobile commerce in the US - and, in particular, the tentativeness of banks in supporting mobile-based initiatives. He asks whether they're ceding the market to third parties like PayPal Mobile - citing Christophe Uzureau, an analyst at Gartner who says "PayPal is more agile than banks. Banks have to rethink their processes and act now."

Adam Balkin writes for News 10 Now in Syracuse, NY about how to use your cell phone for payments - highlighting both PayPal Mobile and Obopay.

TechDigest interviews Robert Perkins of mobile payments provider LUUP. “We actually see PayPal Mobile as good news for us and the industry,” says Perkins. “The challenge is to change people’s perceptions about using their mobile to buy things. If a big brand like PayPal is offering this, then smaller brands coming into the market like ourselves will have time to grow. There’s plenty of room.”

Zimmerman Advertising has announced that it is working with PayPal to help brand marketers integrate PayPal Mobile into their advertising and marketing campaigns. PayPal Mobile, announced April 6th, is a text message-based service that allows consumers to send money anytime, from anywhere, using their mobile telephones.   » Continue Reading

Michal Lev-Ram writes for Business 2.0 about mobile commerce - saying its time has finally come. In the article, Lev-Ram looks at BillMonk, PayPal Mobile, Obopay, TextPayMe, and MyTango. According to Dan Schatt, a senior analyst at Celent, "The stars are finally aligning. This will happen a lot faster than most people realize."

Stuart Elliott reports for the New York Times on plans by the Condé Nast magazine Lucky to give readers the chance to buy products from 18 companies by sending messages from their cellphones in a program called "Live Buy It" that uses a service from PayPal known as PayPal Mobile Text2Buy. According to the article, "one reason the promotion is using the PayPal Mobile Text2Buy service is that in a survey of Lucky readers, 83 percent said they were familiar with PayPal."

KLTV in Tyler, Texas takes a look at how a mobile payment service like Obopay, TextPayMe, or PayPal Mobile can be used to settle up among friends. "Each service operates differently, but the basic idea is the same. To pay someone...you text a code or command to the company along with the amount and the recipient's cell phone number."

Kirstin Cole reports for WCBS-TV in New York about using mobiile payments to transfer money among friends using Text-Pay-Me, Obopay, or PayPal Mobile.

"Mobile payments are set to rise to $10 billion in total revenue by 2010, thanks to the entrance of new players offering m-payment schemes and subsequent consumer demand," according to Alan Goode, senior analyst and author with Juniper Research. "And following the announcement of the expansion of PayPal services into the micro mPayment and mRetail sector, this will only serve to facilitate a fundamental shift in global consumer payment services now and into the future."   » Continue Reading

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's John Cook reports from the Wireless Ventures conference in San Jose on a presentation by Text Pay Me's founder and CEO Philip Yuen in which he described his company's differentiation from PayPal Mobile.

Mylene Mangalindan and Jessica E. Vascellaro of the Wall St. Journal review the new mobile payment services from PayPal Mobile, Obopay, and TextPayMe. Earlier this month, we posted the Payments News US Mobile Payments Players - Comparisons chart that also outlines the most important similarities and differences between these three mobile payments services.

Automatic Merchandiser reports on eSecure Peripherals, a Montreal, Canada-based cashless payment provider and their PayPal Payment Module for networked cashless payment terminals.   » Continue Reading

Ryan Kim reports for the San Francisco Chronicle on last week's CTIA Wireless 2006 conference and the mobile payments initiatives launched by PayPal and Obopay as well as trials underway exploring the use of near-field communication (NFC) chips embedded in cell phones.   » Continue Reading

Anomaly has announced that it has been working with PayPal to develop PayPal Mobile's Text to Buy and Text to Give services.   » Continue Reading

PayPal's announcement on the launch of PayPal Mobile has been released.   » Continue Reading

PayPal has updated it's Text to Buy offer page this morning with twenty-two examples of items that can be easily purchased using PayPal Mobile's new Text to Buy feature. Included are goods from merchants including shirts, DVD's, watches, tools as well as items from charitable organizations such as Unicef, Amnesty International, Starlight Starbright, and more.   » Continue Reading

Multichannel News reports this morning that Bravo has entered into an arrangement with PayPal to enable viewers of its "Top Chef" series to purchase products through PayPal Mobile - presumably using PayPal's new Text to Buy feature. Reuters Eric Auchard reports that PayPal has also signed up News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Viacom's MTV, and the NBA Store for its Text to Buy service.

At Glenbrook, we've put together a preliminary comparison table that compares a number of the attributes of PayPal Mobile, Obopay and TextPayMe. It will probably need to be updated after PayPal officially announces PayPal Mobile tomorrow - and we'd like to remind you again that we said this comparison table was preliminary or, as Google would say, it's in beta. We certainly haven't had time to "make it pretty" either! Comments/corrections/feedback appreciated! Click here to view the table.

Mylene Mangalindan reports for the Wall St. Journal that PayPal will formally introduce its mobile payment service tomorrow as PayPal President Jeff Jordan delivers a keynote address to the CTIA Wireless 2006 conference.   » Continue Reading

It's Springtime and there's PayPal in the Air! PayPal Mobile that is.

Last week, the world learned a bit more about PayPal's next steps in mobile payments and mobile commerce. This weekend, we've taken a deeper look at PayPal's move into mobile payments. We invite you to add your own comments as well - either by choosing to comment on the post directly or by simply sending us an email with your thoughts and telling us it's OK to share (to send us an email, just click on the Feedback link at the bottom of any page).

Guy Brighton has posted an item to the blog PSFK.com reporting that PayPal has soft launched a new PayPal Mobile offering. MobileTracker.com has more about PayPal Mobile including activation instructions. PayPal has posted a new user agreement/policy for mobile payments.   » Continue Reading

I took a look for job postings re: mobile payments at SimplyHired this morning and came up with the following list. Included are openings for both a business manager and a senior product manager at PayPal in the PayPal Mobile group.

"PayPal Mobile is a dynamic, young “start-up” business unit within PayPal dedicated to bringing value-added mobile payment services to consumers and merchants."