Geek and a Half

April 9th, 2006 by Jake

Paypal’s keeping up with the times.

TextPayMe is a service that will allow you to send money just by texting the amount and phone number to their servers. When they were starting out, they also gave away free Xbox360’s to anyone with 36 referral credits. A friend of mine made the attempt, but unfortunately, didn’t make it.

Now PayPal has introduced a new service, PayPal Mobile, to rival TextPayMe’s unique service. You can either call and send money, or even send a text message to them to send money. The activation of my cell phone was uncomplicated and went by smoothly. Right when they said they were calling me, thy did. All I had to do was type in the PIN that I had set one screen earlier, and viola, my mobile phone is now tied to my PayPal account.

But which is easier, which is better? TextPayMe still offers a complimentary $5 just for signing up, no questions asked. And yet PayPal has it’s million-user base, so all it needed to do was slap an ad after you login to advertise the new service. Which do you think will come out on top?