The push to put mobile banking square in the hands of cellphone users appears to have taken a major step forward with handset giant Nokia announcing a $70 million investment in service provider Obopay,
as reported by the Financial Times. This is also on top of the
$69 million chipmaker Qualcomm has invested in the company last year.
But will you actually use it?
The Silicon Valley start-up charges 25 cents for every $1,000 sent and
allows users who sign up for the service to send money to any
text-enabled cellphone, which is pretty much every mobile device out
there. Banks in the UAE including
NBAD and
Dubai Bank already offer such a program for their customers.
But a major question remains - does anyone actually use their cellphone to pay their bills? Noted blogger Om Malik
says he has yet to see anyone
using Obopay's service and though it's not a truly scientific survey, I
haven't really heard anyone loudly extolling the virtues of paying for
dinner by mashing their flip phone.
My guess is that while the service could work on many of today's
devices, using a cellphone with a non-QWERtY keyboard to pinpoint where
you want to send your cash will frustrate enough potential customers to
give up before they even try. It's a chicken-or-egg argument, but the
technology's mainstream breakthrough will only happen once people have
enough iPhones, BlackBerrys or insert-smartphone-platform-here in the
hands and a easy-to-use application developed will we begin to see
mobile banking see hockey stick adoption.
What are your thoughts? Have you used online banking yet? What would
need to happen to convince you to use the service? Use the comments
below to voice your opinion.
Obopay is still apparently alive. You would never know it though. I have had an Obopay account for several years now and, except for the first week I had it ( an eBay person used it to pay for some inexpensive items { eBay still allowed it then} )I have seen only limited use by people. For several years that it has been noted as an accepted payment option on my website only two people used it out of many hundreds that purchased items. I believe that Paypal pretty much has online or mobile payments wrapped up. Google Checkout comes in second followed by Amazon and then checks, money orders and cash. Today I received an email from Obopay informing me of fee changes. That's the first correspondence in a year and a half and I almost forget I even have an Obopay account except for seeing their payment banner on my website when I make changes to some of my web pages. I golf with about 40 people through the course of a week and during the couple of years that I have had an Obopay account not one, not one person of my acquintaince, has even heard of Obopay. I am seriously considering removing their payment banners from my site to make room for some other bit of information. Obopay is not going to be around in the future, except as an entity bought out by some other bohemoth. That's my opinion. A few times while back I questioned a merchant if they accepted Obopay and received a questioning stare as a reply. I would have loved it to succeed though. Mike from silysavg.com
Obopay is still apparently alive. You would never know it though. I have had an Obopay account for several years now and, except for the first week I had it ( an eBay person used it to pay for some inexpensive items { eBay still allowed it then} )I have seen only limited use by people. For several years that it has been noted as an accepted payment dizi izle option on my website only two people used it out of many hundreds that purchased items. I believe that Paypal pretty much has online or mobile payments wrapped up. Google Checkout comes in second followed by Amazon and then checks, money orders and cash.