Send Money Via PayPal Using Your Cell Phone

Written by Nickel - 5 Comments

Did you know that you can make PayPal payments using your cell phone? And I’m not talking here about a fancy-schmancy web-enabled phone, although that would allow you to simply surf on over to PayPal.com. Rather, I’m talking about a run-of-the-mill cell phone. Here’s the deal…

First off, you need to activate your phone. You can then send money to a friend’s phone number or e-mail address simply by sending a text message like this:

send 10 to 2025551414

or simply this:

10 2025551414

or maybe this:

send 10 to name@domain.com

to 729725 (PAYPAL). PayPal will then call or text you to confirm your PIN.

Alternatively, you can call PayPal at 1-800-4PAYPAL (1-800-472-9725) to send money. Thus, you can take advantage of this even if your phone isn’t capable of texting.

Currently, the following U.S. carriers can handle PayPal Mobile for texting:

Alltel
Cinci Bell
Midwest Wireless
Sprint
T-Mobile (regular and pre-paid)
Verizon
Virgin Mobile

While I realize this has been around for a little while, I still thought it was worth mentioning. In fact, this sort of technology (if widely adopted) could revolutionize person-to-person transactions, as you’d be able to effectively pay individuals electronically while out and about.

Published on June 18th, 2007 - 5 Comments
Filed under: Banking, Online
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About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

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Comments (scroll down to add your own):

  1. Neat trick, but I most likely will never use it. It won’t be at any point in the forseeable future, at any rate. Nice to know that it is available, though.

    Comment by Blaine Moore — Jun 18th 2007 @ 2:31 pm

  2. Just to add that you can do this in the UK too.

    Comment by plonkee — Jun 18th 2007 @ 2:42 pm

  3. Obopay allows you to make payments via cell phone text messaging as well (although, I just canceled my account with them because they threatened to increase the fees).

    Comment by Curtis — Jun 18th 2007 @ 3:53 pm

  4. I think this would be great for in-person transactions such as craigslist ads. You don’t have to carry around large amounts of cash. We’re slowly becoming a paperless society with cash.

    Comment by Danny at Money Socket — Jun 18th 2007 @ 5:12 pm

  5. Danny, I think it would be great for craigslist transactions.

    I was also thinking garage sales and the like, but that’s not necessarily a tech-savvy crowd.

    Comment by nickel — Jun 18th 2007 @ 8:50 pm

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