This will be live for about 20 minutes before we see the first payment-originating botnet spread over the GSM networks.

Skynet will steal all of our monies.

some countries are already doing that kind of transactions...

As much as I don't like Western Union due to an absolute lack of customer support (meaning we take your money, and go screw yourself...we won't help you if it's a fraud) I agree that more services (albeit more secure) are needed. PayPau is turning into a GREEDY PIG..the same kind that eBay became. Now the user is no longer important.. It's how we can satisfy our share holders approach and suck as much money out of the sender / recipient as possible. In Poland EVERY bank allows you to do wire transfers for next to nothing or pennies. In the US when I wanted to do a wire transfer within US I was told it's $15.00... WTF??? Banks would be in heaven and drown in extra income if they would treat wire transfers as ATM transactions..charge a service fee equal to that of ATM fees and you will have a huge number of followers..then implement mobile versions that work with cell phones of ALL carriers...not just one that chooses to support the service and you'll have a winner... When are we going to see this??? When the hell freezes over? I guess so.

Maciek
www.symbiosis60.com

Lots of people who live and work in this country (legally as well as possibly not) use WU to do *cash* transfers back to their relatives in the home countries. This isn't a bank account transfer, it's a tranfer of *cash* from one person to another. There is no need for the person at either end to have any kind of account or standing relationship with WU or any other financial institution.

In many places (including many groups in the United States, including non-immigrant communities), people just do not have bank accounts or any other kind of fixed banking/financial relationship, for whatever reason. This is even more the case in many parts of many developing countries, for reasons of trust or locations or institution stability or whatever.

(And Maciek/ORDXPRES, maybe you're just involved in some terminology confusion. Banks in the U.S. are happy to do ACH transfers pretty much for free within the US. Wire transfers are different, and are still available domestically, but are rarely used unless you need must instant verification of the transfer. [ACH usually takes 2 or 3 days.] Wire is also used internationally, because there's no international clearing-house system like ACH that is considered as "safe". Within Europe, wire is cheap, but wire transfers from Europe to the US are still expensive.)

@Ordxpres: Though I do agree with you, the ideal of a cheap, universal money transfer would be nearly impossible. Transfers are expensive because all companies are greedy pigs. And frankly, I don't see PayPal as being all that bad, seeing as they only charge around 5% of the total transaction, even less if you upgrade your account for free. If anyone's bad, it's Amazon; selling fees (~$1/item), closing fees (~$1/item), and variable percentage fees (~15% of the total value). That's evil.