Transfer Cash By Bumping iPhones
For months we’ve been reading stories of upcoming technology designed to turn your iPhone into a device to collect money – through credit card swipe readers, mostly. Today, PayPal’s jumped in on the action by releasing a new iPhone application that allows the transfer of money from one person to another via the bumping together of iPhones.
The app uses tech from Bump Technologies, which originally developed the software to transfer contact information between phones. It also comes with a feature to split a dinner check, including tax and tip, so everyone can transfer their cash to a single person who’d then pay the entire bill.
According to the New York Times, payments are free between PayPal accounts or banks, and fees vary if a credit card’s used. Given that PayPal’s motto is, “Give us 2% of everything you own,” I can see them making a ton of money off microtransactions here. In fact, mobile transactions with PayPal jumped from 24 million transactions in 2008 to an astounding 140 million transactions in 2009, so there’s definitely a market here.
Get bumpin!
