Sprint’s Mobile Wallet, One Step Closer to Carrier Banks
In the slippery slope down the possible disappearance of cash, cellular carriers are also taking aim at the prospected revenue from this widening trend, including Sprint. As CEO Dan Hesse announced last night, Sprint Nextel users will be able to link various mainstream payment methods to mobile purchasing app called the ‘Sprint Mobile Wallet’ as of the next month.
“Users will be able to link Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, Amazon Payments and other accounts to the mobile wallet and then authorize a purchase with those accounts by entering a PIN (personal identification number) and choosing an account to use.”
SkyMall, Gameloft and Namco had already stroke a deal with Sprint about accepting the Wallet, which is a big step forward in the light the carrier is the first one to ever offer integrated payments options such this. Nonetheless, despite its innovative capabilities, Sprint may be making a lot of developers and users happy but it’s not the only one experimenting with an ultra-simplified mobile all-in-one payment method. As covered here, AT&T and Verizon are testing a joint payment attempt to allow users to wirelessly ‘swing-and-pay’ with their Smartphones, literally.
Where there is digital payment there will always be PayPal, or at least that’s where they’re heading to. As reported here, PayPal has made several announcements regarding payment enhancement, including embeddable PayPal apps not requiring shoppers to redirect to their site and a new PayPal Business Payments 50 cent/ transaction fee. The online payments giant is also getting involved with Facebook (again), as the platform will be utilized to pay the FB developer community as well for in-app virtual goods purchases.
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