PayPal’s new rival in offline payments department, Boku Inc. has arrived. Owned by eBay, PayPal is used by customers to receive and send payments online. As being the only player in the race first, PayPal had nothing to worry about but now it seems that it does, in the race of developing a mobile payment service which consumers can use in physical stores.
The new company, Boku Inc. is a big online mobile payments company, which is supported by venture capital firms that include Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, revealed its new service on Thursday which allows people to use their mobile phones to pay for the things they buy. The service will allow people to use their phones wherever credit cards are accepted.
Boku Inc. is not a new name as it provides carrier billion via nearly 230 wireless carriers, which include Verizon Communications, Vodafone Group Plc, AT&T and others in more than 60 nations. This service of the company allows people to pay using their phone number and get the transactions they make through their phone charged on their monthly telephone bill.
The new service by Boku, called Boku Accounts, allows users to buy in physical stores, which is a much wider and expanded market as compared to the phone service by the same company. The new service will be branded and provided by wireless carriers to different customers, with Boku being on the back hand, running the system. The new service will make Boku PayPal’s new rival, which is also pushing its online payment service to physical stores. On the other hand, Google Inc. is also trying to get the Google Wallet service in bigger stores via partnership through credit card giants including MasterCard Inc, as well as Citigroup Inc. While it may mean more competition to PayPal, for consumers, it is something that will make things easier.
