It's like PayPal but for SMS
February 21, 2006 8:48 PM Subscribe
Remember when PayPal was just for beaming money from one Palm to another? NYTimes covers Y Combinator, and points out one of their projects, TextPayMe.com, which is trying to repeat PayPal's feat but on your cell phone with text messages. For those interested: Wired coverage from last week.
Sounds like it might have a better chance of working, since the penetration is better, and the devices are actually online.
The palm->palm thing was stupid, obviously, but paypal doesn't seem to have done too badly..
posted by delmoi at 8:53 PM on February 21, 2006
The palm->palm thing was stupid, obviously, but paypal doesn't seem to have done too badly..
posted by delmoi at 8:53 PM on February 21, 2006
More background at Slashdot. This is what I get for posting to MeFi before reading Slashdot...
posted by pwb503 at 8:53 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by pwb503 at 8:53 PM on February 21, 2006
How many times a day do those "Y Combinator" folks have to explain that they're not actually affiliated with Yahoo!?
posted by smackfu at 8:59 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by smackfu at 8:59 PM on February 21, 2006
TextPayMe.com? The only way that URL could be worse is if it was icash2000.com
...and they threw in a few more swooshes for the logo.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:11 PM on February 21, 2006
...and they threw in a few more swooshes for the logo.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:11 PM on February 21, 2006
does the textpayme.com link have a referral in it?
Hmm... It looks like it does. If you go to "textpayme.com" it redirects you to here, no 'eref=', but otherwise exactly the same. But, that could have been picked up along the way composing the post.
Other things I discovered composing this post: 1) textpayme.com is launching internationally, including in Italy, India and Japan, and 2) the word "surreptitious" means the exact opposite of what I thought it meant.
posted by delmoi at 9:46 PM on February 21, 2006
Hmm... It looks like it does. If you go to "textpayme.com" it redirects you to here, no 'eref=', but otherwise exactly the same. But, that could have been picked up along the way composing the post.
Other things I discovered composing this post: 1) textpayme.com is launching internationally, including in Italy, India and Japan, and 2) the word "surreptitious" means the exact opposite of what I thought it meant.
posted by delmoi at 9:46 PM on February 21, 2006
Seems a bit shady -- MobileLime has been slowly rolling out in Boston over the past few years, and works in a similar fashion but AFAIK only in a customer->retailer format, and with discounts for using the service.
posted by VulcanMike at 9:55 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by VulcanMike at 9:55 PM on February 21, 2006
textpayme.com redirects me to https://www.textpayme.com/us/secure/index.tpm which seems very different than the link which adds "?eref=MTAxNQ==" to the end
posted by jeffmik at 9:57 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by jeffmik at 9:57 PM on February 21, 2006
The original Y Combinator, from which Graham's firm has taken its name.
posted by weston at 10:00 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by weston at 10:00 PM on February 21, 2006
They've had moble -> whatever payments in other countries for a long time. Kind of irritating that they don't have it in the US, would be much nicer then some BS like paypal. At the moment there's a lot less risk of a moble phone being hacked then a PC.
posted by delmoi at 10:01 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by delmoi at 10:01 PM on February 21, 2006
Why does TextPayMe Need people's banking info? Let people add money with a credit card, and mail them a check for withdrawl.
Heh. only 900 people have signed up.
But yeah, they need a better website.
posted by delmoi at 10:05 PM on February 21, 2006
Heh. only 900 people have signed up.
But yeah, they need a better website.
posted by delmoi at 10:05 PM on February 21, 2006
Looks enough like a referral link that I flagged it. It could be removed without damaging the post, if the admins want to leave it up.
posted by Malor at 10:05 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by Malor at 10:05 PM on February 21, 2006
I really should have thought of textpayme.com, which is a painfully obvious yet somehow completely novel idea. It's completely viable.
posted by newton at 10:23 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by newton at 10:23 PM on February 21, 2006
So far, Y Combinator in toto is more interesting than any individual project under its wings. That said, the idea of taking all this raw brain power and, uh, throwing it against a wall to see what sticks (ewww!) has got to result in something.
posted by dhartung at 12:29 AM on February 22, 2006
posted by dhartung at 12:29 AM on February 22, 2006
In 2000, using a wap browser on my cellphone, I once paid someone twenty bucks for a cheeseburger they bought me in a bar.
Six years later and this is all we get? [oh, and I removed the ref link]
posted by mathowie at 1:40 AM on February 22, 2006
Six years later and this is all we get? [oh, and I removed the ref link]
posted by mathowie at 1:40 AM on February 22, 2006
Why does TextPayMe Need people's banking info? Let people add money with a credit card, and mail them a check for withdrawl.
Better yet: let credit cards work both ways (as in: you can take money off, and put money on via paypal or txtpayme, or similar services), just like a bank account. Although I'm sure the cc companies have deals with banks which prohibit them from doing so.
posted by NekulturnY at 2:16 AM on February 22, 2006
Better yet: let credit cards work both ways (as in: you can take money off, and put money on via paypal or txtpayme, or similar services), just like a bank account. Although I'm sure the cc companies have deals with banks which prohibit them from doing so.
posted by NekulturnY at 2:16 AM on February 22, 2006
My company is currently doing a project on the future of the CNP (card not present) market for a major payments company, and we've looked at TextPayMe in the context of this.
To us, it seems very unlikely to succeed. Alternative payment systems are forever being launched (like Ukash, and Splash Plastic before it), but they very rarely gain the mindshare and penetration to become usable alternatives to cash/cheque/Visa/Mastercard/AmEx.
Nor is 'being another PayPal' an achievable goal in this marketplace. Setting up a new payment system is an incredibly difficult and costly undertaking - for one thing, you attract every fraudster in town (as Max Levchin, PayPal co-founder, relates in his NerdTV interview). I very much doubt that Y Combinator - or any other VC, for that matter - would have the stomach to get involved in this, as the likelihood and cost of failure is simply far too high.
TextPayMe's best bet might be to develop a sophisticated mobile billing/payment engine and then hope (pray!) to be bought out by a major player wanting to get into mobile payments. There are precedents for this: the way that PayPal was bailed out by eBay, and the recent purchase of a credit card company by NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
However, it seems very unlikely to me that TextPayMe will end up with anything of value to serious players in this field - a field which is pretty mature outside of the US. For one thing, European mobile operators have been developing mobile payments platforms for years - viz the abortive SimPay, now succeeded (second time lucky?) by X-Pay. And the mobile payments people working for these operators are both highly experienced and battle-scarred - I know, I've talked to them. They would, I'm sure, eat the TextPayMe boys for breakfast...
posted by runkelfinker at 2:50 AM on February 22, 2006
To us, it seems very unlikely to succeed. Alternative payment systems are forever being launched (like Ukash, and Splash Plastic before it), but they very rarely gain the mindshare and penetration to become usable alternatives to cash/cheque/Visa/Mastercard/AmEx.
Nor is 'being another PayPal' an achievable goal in this marketplace. Setting up a new payment system is an incredibly difficult and costly undertaking - for one thing, you attract every fraudster in town (as Max Levchin, PayPal co-founder, relates in his NerdTV interview). I very much doubt that Y Combinator - or any other VC, for that matter - would have the stomach to get involved in this, as the likelihood and cost of failure is simply far too high.
TextPayMe's best bet might be to develop a sophisticated mobile billing/payment engine and then hope (pray!) to be bought out by a major player wanting to get into mobile payments. There are precedents for this: the way that PayPal was bailed out by eBay, and the recent purchase of a credit card company by NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
However, it seems very unlikely to me that TextPayMe will end up with anything of value to serious players in this field - a field which is pretty mature outside of the US. For one thing, European mobile operators have been developing mobile payments platforms for years - viz the abortive SimPay, now succeeded (second time lucky?) by X-Pay. And the mobile payments people working for these operators are both highly experienced and battle-scarred - I know, I've talked to them. They would, I'm sure, eat the TextPayMe boys for breakfast...
posted by runkelfinker at 2:50 AM on February 22, 2006
Haven't they been running something similar to this, but much more sophisticated, for years in Japan? I'm sure I saw something on TV about how 20% (or whatever) of payments in Tokyo are made with a phone. And something like 40% of people in Tokyo never carry cash.
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:06 AM on February 22, 2006
posted by MetaMonkey at 4:06 AM on February 22, 2006
NekulturnY - see Visa Direct
MetaMonkey - see i-mode FeliCa
posted by runkelfinker at 4:33 AM on February 22, 2006
MetaMonkey - see i-mode FeliCa
posted by runkelfinker at 4:33 AM on February 22, 2006
Similar to runkelfinker, but coming from the mobile end, we've been idly kicking this around the office since it was profiled in Wired, and we can't see it working - too insecure.
SMS are sent as plain text, and originating numbers can be trivially forged. You'd have to carry a list of single-use tokens with you, crossing one off each time you make a transaction.
Payments via mobile sound great in theory, but they have to be supported/run by the networks, not bolted on after the fact. And mobile networks are going to want to take a 50% cut for running the service (why? because they're telcos, and therefore evil).
posted by Leon at 5:22 AM on February 22, 2006
SMS are sent as plain text, and originating numbers can be trivially forged. You'd have to carry a list of single-use tokens with you, crossing one off each time you make a transaction.
Payments via mobile sound great in theory, but they have to be supported/run by the networks, not bolted on after the fact. And mobile networks are going to want to take a 50% cut for running the service (why? because they're telcos, and therefore evil).
posted by Leon at 5:22 AM on February 22, 2006
addendum: The confirmation phonecall offers a measure of security I guess, but I'd still rather use a web browser an https.
posted by Leon at 5:26 AM on February 22, 2006
posted by Leon at 5:26 AM on February 22, 2006
In 2000, using a wap browser on my cellphone, I once paid someone twenty bucks for a cheeseburger they bought me in a bar.
I hope it was a good cheeseburger.
I agree with runkelfinker- unless they get more juice behind them, they're doomed. I can absolutely see people getting on board once there's some publicity.
It's surprising how many people in the U.S. still use cash as opposed to debit (outrageous debt notwithstanding- I mean for smaller purchases); this is another step removed. I think a lot of people are nervous about stuff like this. (not that they need to be)
posted by exlotuseater at 10:37 AM on February 22, 2006
I hope it was a good cheeseburger.
I agree with runkelfinker- unless they get more juice behind them, they're doomed. I can absolutely see people getting on board once there's some publicity.
It's surprising how many people in the U.S. still use cash as opposed to debit (outrageous debt notwithstanding- I mean for smaller purchases); this is another step removed. I think a lot of people are nervous about stuff like this. (not that they need to be)
posted by exlotuseater at 10:37 AM on February 22, 2006
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posted by smackfu at 8:51 PM on February 21, 2006