Are debit cards soon to be a thing of the past? Well, no one is ready to claim that yet, but yesterday's news from eBay's PayPal may signal a significant shift in on-demand purchasing for consumers.

The new service, called PayPal Mobile, allows buyers to pay via text message exchange on their cell phones using a secure PIN (Text to Buy) or through a voice service (Pay by Phone). According to a Reuters report, the service will be launched in the next couple of weeks in the United States, Canada and Britain. Other markets worldwide will follow for the world's biggest online payments service.

The service will allow consumers with a PayPal account to buy a product they might see in a magazine, for example, using a special PayPal Mobile code. Using a mobile phone that has been registered with the service, a consumer can text message the item code to a displayed phone number. PayPal calls the buyer to confirm purchase and the money is sent to the seller.

According to PayPal, consumers will see 'Text to Buy' in magazines and newspapers, on TV, billboards, posters, websites, and elsewhere.

One interesting item in the service's FAQ page is that there are no fees involved for most users: "PayPal does not charge you to send money by phone, or to receive money into a PayPal Personal account. If you have a PayPal Premier or Business account, you're charged the standard rates for receiving payments into your account. Your phone carrier may charge you for text messages or airtime minutes per transaction."

Walla World
United Press International reported this week that eBay has some "competition" in Israel. Israeli Internet portal Walla! unveiled on Wednesday two new services similar to eBay and PayPal: Walla!Buy and Walla!Pay, said UPI.

Like eBay, Walla!Buy features auctions, fixed-price sales and classified ads for items such as cars and real estate, it continued.

You can see the rest of the article here.

More RSS
Arturo Zacarias again, a member of the New Technologies team at eBay, announced this week that eBay is once again expanding its RSS feeds. The news feeds now include the eBay Search pages.

"With this enhancement you can create a custom RSS feed that will deliver the results of your eBay Search to you via any RSS reader. Since we are integrating the RSS support with our Advanced Search pages, you'll have complete control over how you narrow down your search," Zacharias says.

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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