Verizon Adds Obopay Application

By Brian Dolan Obopay inked one of the biggest deals in the mobile payments sector yesterday: Verizon Wireless will now offer a BREW-based Obopay application on its Get It Now catalog. “The Verizon Wireless announcement is big for us,” says Obopay’s Vice President of Product Management Irv Henderson. “We are the first mobile payments solution that has been deployed on a Tier 1 carrier” in the U.S. “It signals to the rest of the industry that mobile payments are being taken seriously by the carriers, and it’s certainly making conversations [with other carriers] easier for us.” While Obopay has always worked on Verizon Wireless devices, the official deal with the carrier brings an extra feature: Mobile registration. Currently, all new Obopay users need to register from their PCs, but Verizon Wireless users will be able to directly sign up from their mobile phone if they are using the BREW version of the application. “Our BREW-based application offers a much more compelling user experience” than previous Obopay applications, Henderson says. “The new look is a lot cleaner graphically and navigationally. The BREW client definitely makes the service more approachable for end users. However, it’s worth noting that BREW is a good development environment,” Henderson says. Obopay expects to launch the BREW application in the coming weeks.