PayPal mobile coming soon

PayPal is gearing up to launch mobile payments in Australia. “There’s more mobiles than people in this country” says PayPal head of marketing Marcelo Silva. And he says based on the group’s research mobile payments are something consumers are excited about.

Silva told the audience at Online Banking Review’s eMarketing forum Australia will be one of the launch countries for the service.

The payments giant will also be replicating its existing US mobile payments offering for merchants. As Silva pointed out the current state of play with mobile in Australia sees carriers playing a dominant role. “As you know they are making a lot of coin out of selling ring tones. If you want to participate as a merchant and do business with those carriers it’s going to cost you about 30-60 per cent of the revenue you make.”

Silva says the new service will offer the same fee structure as PayPal generally, opening up the mobile market to more merchants.

With the number of Australian PayPal accounts now running at around 4 million this play is likely to have a widespread consumer impact.

Something PayPal Australian head Andrew Pipolo is likely to be discussing when he presents at our upcoming Innovative Payments forum in Sydney.