Archive for May 19th, 2008

Obopay Offers Foreign Remittance Service Over Mobile Phones

Published by Babar Bhatti on May 19, 2008 under Information Technology, M-Commerce, Mobile Applications, Mobile Companies

Sending money back home is big business and Obopay wants a slice of it. From Pakistan Amaana has similar goals and it will be interesting to see once they are out of beta. Last I read was its CEO’s interview at Green & White. Another emerging player, Inov8 also claims to offer this service as part of its mobile solutions but I’ve yet to see details. I think it will take a long and focused effort to slog through the contracts and regulatory struggle. It will be a while before a winner emerges. Lets see if Obopay can convince Indian expats to use its service. From GigaOm:

Much like Western Union is the money transfer agent of choice in the real world, and PayPal is online, Obopay wants to be the way to send money for mobile. To do this it will have to win out over PayPal’s own mobile division, plus a myriad of startups such as KushCash and TextPayMe.com.

Obopay is counting on the experience of people like CFO Dave Johnson, a former CFO at PayPal and Banc of America Securities, because its global money transfer plans require it to handle banking relationships in multiple countries (right now it’s only in the U.S. and India).

It had to get a whopping 41 licenses in order to become a registered money transfer agent in the U.S. The result is that Obopay allows users to store and move money on their Obopay account accessed through mobiles or the web, and also to transfer money from their bank accounts using their phone to that of another person — even if that person doesn’t have Obopay.

The ability to transfer money regardless of a person’s carrier or bank is a compelling proposition. Realini hopes allowing non-Obopay members to receive money will help the company grow over the long term. The money transfer play here is much broader than the “split the check” kinds of social payments offered by KushCash and TextMyBill. The amount of money transfered between countries is in the billions, so if Obopay can expand quickly on an international scale, it could very well achieve what it’s trying to accomplish.