Obopay, the mobile payment service, gets $7 million funding

By Vivek Puri | September 5th, 2006 at 02:08 pm ET         

Obopay, the mobile payment service, has closed a $7 million strategic investment round lead by Qualcomm. Other participants in this round included Redpoint Ventures, Onset Ventures and Richmond Management. Obopay will be using these funds for expanding its marketing and operations. Obopay, based out of Redwood City, CA was founded in March 2006 as a competing service to Paypal Mobile and TextPayMe.

Obopay has launched a mobile application, available for use on all SMS-enabled mobile phones. In case the Obopay application doesn’t work with your phone model or carrier, you can access Obopay service through a Browser on your phone or use SMS. Using the mobile application you can send money to other Obopay users in which case the money will be instantly sent from your account to theirs otherwise they will receive a message to create Obopay account to receive funds. You can also check your account balance and transaction history from your mobile. You can also request money from other Obopay users. Transaction amounts must be between $0.01-$2500.00. All of these transactions can also be performed by Obopay website. Obopay also sends you an Obopay Prepaid MasterCard.

As for the transaction fees, there are no charge for receiving money. If you pay by phone or Send Money by Web there is a $0.10 charge. For accepting a Request Pay (by phone), there will be a $0.10 charge. If you add money to your Obopay account from a credit or debit card you will be charged a fee of 2.5% of the amount that you load + $0.30.

This service is similar to what Paypal Mobile or TextPayMe provide, except for the extra traction fees from Obopay that no one likes to pay. Right now it’s a tough play for Obopay in the p2p space. Also there are no concrete plans to venture into Person-to-Merchant space, where the real money is.

Links:
Obopay
Obopal Help