PayPal has partnered US wireless operator Sprint to offer its person-to-person services via the telco's new downloadable mobile wallet.
Sprint subscribers with a PayPal account can send money to anyone in the world with a mobile phone number or e-mail address through the MyMoneyManager application. The recipient gets a text message to let them know money has been sent to them.
The Sprint application - which is also being used by BB&T and IBC Bank - was developed by California-based mobile banking outfit mFoundry.
PayPal launched a text based mobile payments service in 2006, enabling registered users to make person-to-person fund transfers or pay for purchases via their handset. This was followed up last year by Mobile Checkout which lets customers make purchases from online merchants using the mobile Web.
Person-to-person mobile payments is an increasingly important market. Earlier this year PayPal rival Obopay launched a service to let US customers transfer money from their account to non-Obopay users.
But the big market for peer-to-peer transfers could come from remittances. Western Union has teamed with GSMA - an international trade group of mobile phone operators - to develop the commercial and technical specifications for connecting mobile operators to its money transfer network.