eBay's online payment service PayPal has officially introduced PayPal Mobile, a text message-based service allowing consumers in the US and Canada to send using their mobile telephones. The announcement came at the CTIA Wireless 2006 show in Las Vegas on Thursday, where PayPal President Jeff Jordan is scheduled to demonstrate it during the opening keynote address at 9:30 a.m. The MobileCrunch blog first broke news of PayPal's mobile service in mid-March (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m03/i23/s01).

Using PayPal Mobile's Text to Buy service, consumers can buy items by sending product codes via text message. Bravo, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, MTV, and the NBA Store are offering items for purchase with Text to Buy. PayPal Mobile also enables users to Text to Give to charities such as Amnesty International, Starlight Starbright and UNICEF.

PayPal's Jordan said in a press statement, "With the overwhelming popularity of mobile phones, the time has never been better for the merging of ecommerce and wireless devices. PayPal already has more than 100 million accounts worldwide, and our customers have already entrusted their personal and financial information to PayPal."

To use PayPal Mobile, customers first activate their telephones by logging into their PayPal accounts at https://www.paypal.com/mobile. After registering their mobile telephone numbers, users choose a secure Personal Identification Number (PIN).

PayPal Mobile users make payments by sending a text message to PayPal. PayPal calls the user back to confirm the mobile payment, and then sends the money to the recipient. In the case of a Text to Buy purchase, after the merchant receives the payment, the item is shipped to the address already saved in the user's PayPal account.

PayPal said every PayPal Mobile payment is PIN-protected and backed by PayPal's state-of-the-art fraud prevention system. With PayPal Mobile, financial information is never shared with the recipient. Each user's financial information is stored on PayPal's secure servers, not on the mobile telephone, so even if the telephone is lost or stolen, the user's PayPal account remains secure.

The Wall Street Journal reports that about 70% of PayPal's revenue is generated through eBay transactions. PayPal is exhibiting at booth #1665 at CTIA Wireless 2006 this week.

https://www.paypal.com/mobile