Obopay Offers Foreign Remittance Service Over Mobile Phones
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.
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Amana has been working on this since ages. i first heard about their plans about 4 years ago and at that they time i think they had already spent 2 years. i dont know what are they planning.
inov8 has already sold an mcommerce based system to lesco. but has anyone heard of it? is it again an example of using your links and sell a useless thing to govt. of pakistan?
orion also seems to be a failure.
Inov8 has not sold any m-commerce based solution to LESCO. Inov8’s mobile commerce service is subscription based where merchants and bill payment organizations usually do not pay anything to sign on. In fact they end up saving on collection / reconciliation costs.
Please check your facts before making comments on things you do not have the slightest idea about. Is it again an example of sitting on the sidelines passing wise cracks about people that are trying to build something truly remarkable. I think so.
I think Mr. Haris missed his bus to the long march.