A new service in the US, TextPayMe, which is said to rival that of Paypal has been widely covered by western blogs for weeks now.
I think I need not explain how this system works as we already know much about Smart Money, Smart Padala and G-Cash.
TextPayMe is actually giving away $5 for each new subscribers and sending a XBox 360 to people who refer 36 new users of their service.
Yeah, yeah, we’re ahead of them by leaps and years, but we we have enough volume? A commenter named JLP over at PTB says so.
The only other advantage I saw in TextPayMe is they serve across several mobile providers unlike here where exclusivity is a big hindrance. Makes you wonder if these telcos (Smart & Globe) are merely crunching value-added services not for its individual merit and profitability but only to retain or attract more customers to switch over.
Here’s an interesting paper from the World Bank and the GSM Association about mobile micro-payment success in the Philippines.