PayPal Goes Mobile

Stitch_Surfs writes "PayPal has gone mobile. MobileCrunch breaks the news (with images) of PayPal's (un) surprising move onto mobile phones. According to the site, money can be sent,received and goods purchased all via PayPal from your mobile phone."

PayPal already has a mobile (WAP) interface...

[nxtw]

PayPal has had a mobile interface for years, via WAP.
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/mob ile-outside [paypal.com]

Are you freakin' kidding me?

[mrshowtime]

Paypal has a hard on for "limiting" account access for just about any reason today. Does anyone see the nightmare of trying to use paypal on a mobile phone? You had might as well call paypal and ask them to suspend your account, because 10 seconds after you sign up for "paypal mobile" your paypal account will suddenly have "suspicious" activity (you actually using it)and will be limited for "your" protection. Paypal limited my account access when I was using my paypal debit card out of state (one state over) to buy GAS. It was just ONE transaction and -that- triggered their fraud flags?! Maybe if google was doing this, but paypal, forget it.

Re:Mobile sounds well and good, but..

[AuMatar]

Credit cards are issued by banks and have strict federal regulation. Paypal is NOT a bank, as decided by a federal court, and is under no regulation. I'd rather use a credit card.

Re:Not surprising

[silentbozo]

Before it was "paypal" wasn't it X.com?

No. X.com was a banking service that was later merged with Paypal. Paypal existed for processing payments before X.com was absorbed. I know this because I had accounts with both, and after X.com was taken over, they killed off the checking services.

I was rather pissed that Paypal dropped the beamable cash idea (I chose not to pursue the same line of business for my startup at the time because they already had one up and running), so I'm glad they're finally putting those patents to use.

Direct Linkage

[RickPartin]

Please Slashdot link to the article and not the front page KTHX. Here is the direct link for people reading this in the future. http://mobilecrunch.com/2006/03/22/paypal-goes-mob ile/ [mobilecrunch.com]

Re:Mobile sounds well and good, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wouldn't it be harder to spot a phishing scam over a mobile device considering that the display on a mobile is pretty limited in screen real estate ? On good ol' 'puters you can just move your mouse over the hyperlink and make out that it's a scam."

Technically, no..
Mobile to Mobile - shows the phone number "MIN" of the original sender
SNPP and Email to SMS - shows the same MIN as destination. IE. it appears to be from myself

Which basically leaves only a few options left, but this Paypal thing I presume is being done via SMPP, which means it will be assigned to a short code. Only privaleged accounts can spoof short codes, as in, you must authenticate to the SMSC server beforehand. Which usually means, firewall access + an account.

Phishing should be much more difficult.