So Paypal has acquired BillMeLater, an interesting move and although it may not seem groundbreaking it does seem to chip away at the banks standard business model. Look at it like this; if Paypal is online payment made easy and BillMeLater is buy online now and pay later then the growth of the combined business must further encourage online sales and take more transactions away from traditional banks.

Another case of putting two things together and getting more than the sum of the parts?

It reminds me of another Paypal related blog – I posted back in April ‘08, Paypal + iPhone = m-commerce

In that instance, two capabilities coming together to drive the use of mobiles in the purchase process.

Here is the announcement.

Tom Standage, Business Editor of The Economist magazine, says that mobile banking has been a major success story in the developing world and is in fact ahead of the developed world. He explained that in a typical developing country, for each extra 10% of people with mobile phones, an extra half a percentage point is put on GDP growth a year.

Its worth listening to the audio of Tom explaining this link between growth of mobiles and GDP growth in developing countries. The audio link is embedded within the story.

There’s been a long trail of activity in Mobile Banking & Payments over recent years and some banks would seem to be on the 2nd launch of mobile banking now – there is an upswell of focus on the mobile phone as a serious tool for payments and banking, with SMS and NFC featuring as the popular technologies.

That’s not so surprising when you remember 1) Mobile phones are poised to become the world’s first ubiquitous technology and 2) The cost to acquire customers means banks* are searching for the edge over the competition. But knowing there’s an opportunity and exploiting that opportunity successfully are two different things altogether.

In this wave of Mobile Banking initiatives I’m intrigued to see how the strategies of Banks, Mobile Operators and Retailers will unfold. I’m sure we will see more announcements like this one in the year ahead – I look forward to the fun of the game – who will be the key players and what tactics will they use to get ahead?

But I will close with two little warnings a)don’t lose sight of the fact that the internet is going mobile and so all your online investment can and should be leveraged not ignored when you get seduced by new technology standards for mobiles; b)mobile is one channel and in the customer’s mind it matters how you link that with your other channels so think that through before you get carried away in any one channel.

*Note: Not just banks, all consumer businesses are looking for an edge & many are competing with banks for the consumer relationship (by which they mean money)

I’ve taken my Paypal account for granted; it’s been there for me whenever I bought stuff on eBay and from time to time it’s been useful for other online transactions – actually it is a mainstay of `account to account payments’ in the online world, but I’ve never given it a lot of thought in terms of online strategy. But suddenly….

Well a couple of weeks ago I became an eBay seller – spring cleaning the shed and selling a few of the bikes and golf clubs I’ve accumulated – and discovered how flexible and straightforward Paypal is when you’re on the receiving end of online payments. So it gave me a better view of it’s role online and it set me thinking yet again about whether we will ever see m-commerce take off.

Well, if you stay on this thought-train it does seem possible… Just think what happens when the iPhone generation starts to browse and buy on the move.

eBay mobile + Paypal + iPhone = simple m-commerce!

Taking a quick look around for more info about Paypal and it’s role in the online strategy of financial services and retail companies I found this interesting piece which gives loads of useful background on Paypal, their positioning and also their Mobile strategy. So maybe this is another reason to carry some hope for m-commerce???