MasterCard Sends Money on BlackBerry, iPhone. Still No Android Apps.
MasterCard has launched a BlackBerry app for sending and receiving credits, securely transferring money person-to-person. Set up for the US, the new MasterCard MoneySend app is quite similar to PayPal’s mobile app, and comes weeks after the credit card company launched the service for the iPhone.
“MasterCard MoneySend allows users to ‘Send,’ ‘Pay’ or ‘Request Funds’ for a wide range of reasons including the everyday ‘IOU,’ informal services purchased from friends and family, or payments to a personal trainer, roommate, babysitter, gardener, housekeeper or repairman,” said Andrew Ong, Group Head, P2P, MasterCard Worldwide. “We are excited to extend MasterCard MoneySend to the BlackBerry Smartphone platform so that we can continue to provide consumers with innovative ways to make their lives easier.”
MasterCard seems determined to expand its mobile banking tools, having launched API tools for developers in order to remain competitive with other credit card companies and emerging payment tools. Last month, MasterCard acquired DataCash for $520 million, looking to take its mobile banking tools global.
MasterCard has competitors outside of the credit industry as well, including banks and wireless service providers. Virtual currency is effectively bringing about a new economic sub-system, where companies outside of the financial sector can become credit exchange portals for just about anyone. MasterCard’s new BlackBerry app speaks to this trend, and also to the type of user MasterCard is targeting. With new iPhone and BlackBerry apps, the noticable absence on Android indicates MasterCard’s focus on business users.
MoneySend is powered by Obopay, which handles the transactions on the backend. Obopay has significantly increased its prevelance in the past year, donning another partnership this week with STAR Network, and raising $70 million in its last round of funding. The use of Obopay and similar tools designed around instant, mobile banking is a global phenomenon that is tapping into the buying power of an extremely large demographic, many of which have no banking accounts or use their mobile devices as their primary point of access to the web.
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