We are honored that Navi Radjou, Executive Director of the Centre for India & Global Business at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, wrote a glowing piece on the importance of, as he put it, Obopay’s role in “networking international talent, capital, and ideas to meet global demand for new products and services” in today’s Wall Street Journal.
November 11th, 2009
“California-based Obopay…operates in India and the United States and is looking to move into other markets. Obopay made news most recently with a $35 million investment from Nokia…Obopay services can be tied into a bank or credit card account or prepaid card. It’s carving out a niche not currently served by credit or debit cards with people-to-people transfers such as a parent sending money to a child at college or to a relative during an emergency…And many small merchants don’t accept credit cards, so it becomes an easy way to pay for haircuts, babysitting and other smaller purchases, according to David Schwartz, senior director of product management and marketing.”
You can read the full article here on ITBusinessEdge.
July 16th, 2009
Recently, over at Banktastic, we were talking about the possibility of the whole “mobile wallet” idea being a flying car, but no such thing! In a few year’s time, or perhaps even sooner, using your phone for money transactions is going to be as common as the way we already use phones for communicating, listening to music and creating content.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Amol Sharma has certainly picked up on this, writing about Vodafone and Western Union jumping on the mobile wagon, and of course, pioneering company Obopay.
Obopay, based in Redwood City, Calif., offers domestic money-transfer services in the U.S. and India. Users set up a PayPal-like account online, and then send money via text message, mobile Web browser or specialized software applications they download onto their phone. They can withdraw money from their cellphone accounts using special Obopay debit cards at automatic-teller machines. Obopay is trying out a service with Citibank that allows users to link their existing bank accounts directly to their cellphones, so it is easier to send and withdraw money.
Chief Executive Carol Realini said Obopay is working on a service to handle remittances between the U.S. and India, whose $27 billion in cross-border receipts leads all countries. Regulations have been a hurdle, she said. Besides getting approval from 41 U.S. states and meeting requirements of the U.S. Patriot Act and Bank Secrecy Act, Obopay must comply with various Indian government rules as well.
In India, Obopay plans to link mobile money transfers to electronic-payment services, so consumers can refill their prepaid phone minutes or pay their utility bills. “This may be the first time many of these people have access to electronic payments — previously they’ve been a cash-based consumer,” Ms. Realini said.
Mobile payment capabilities is going to make our world even more connected than ever! It’s a very exciting time to enjoy and take advantage of this technology.
Want to learn more? Read visit CitiObopay and also read about Obopay’s work in India.
Link to complete article here (subscription service).
Technorati Tags: obopay, wall street journal, carol realini, news, mobile payments, india, citiobopay
1 comment December 11th, 2008
Someone sent this pie graph to me earlier today, and I thought it was pretty interesting. In fact, our whole team is still talking about it. Before I get into anymore details, let me show you the chart first.
Are you surprised that RIM has such a huge smartphone market in the US? I am not. It did surprise me that Apple actually lost market shares between Q4 2007 and Q1 2008 though, but that’s not my point. What did surprise me is the following chart:
Nokia owns 52.9% of the World Smartphone Market? That’s huge! I guess US only covers a small portion of the world mobile industry. In fact, 44.5% of the US market is only equivalent to 11.4% of the world market!
I believe that Bharti Airtel and China Mobile alone already have more than the total number of US mobile subscribers combined, so the numbers do make sense. Just not what I had imagined, since Nokia smartphones aren’t as popular here in the US. I guess world domination is more important!
Technorati Tags: smartphone, china, india, news, graph, cell phone
June 12th, 2008
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we officially opened an office in India. Check out our video demo on how this works.
April 21st, 2008
As some of you probably already heard, we have officially expanded into India! About a week ago, we announced that we just reached a partnership with YES bank.
Taken directly from our press release:
“With Obopay, YES BANK customers securely and instantly transfer money to and from any mobile phone number with Obopay’s mobile application, text message or mobile Web. YES BANK customers can instantly withdraw cash received using their YES BANK debit card.”
Read the whole press release on Forbes.
India’s mobile market is growing fast. For 2008, they have been adding more than 8 million customers a month! Needless to say, we are really excited about this new opportunity.
April 4th, 2008
I am really not trying to brag, but Obopay has been all over the news recently. I just ran a quick search on Google News and saw that we actually showed up 38 times in the last month alone. This is just for news articles, not including blogs, forums, and other websites.
A lot of it probably has to do with our two major releases this month:
We will certainly talk about these two things very soon. But needless to say, we are pretty excited about what’s going on!
April 1st, 2008
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