Nokia Money wants some of what PayPal's having
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 26th 2009 @ 5:46PM
A healthy percentage of Nokia's revenue comes from emerging markets, and the company goes to great lengths to fill out the very bottom rungs of its lineup with devices to satisfy seemingly every need of every demographic -- built-in flashlights, segmented contact lists for phones shared among family members, the list goes on -- and now the company's tackling another need by offering rudimentary banking and money transfer services by way of the handset. Noting that of the four billion cellphones in the world there are only 1.6 billion bank accounts, Nokia's so-called Nokia Money service will bring electronic money management to some areas of the world for the first time -- a customer need only know the phone number of the intended recipient to send a payment. Powered by mobile money transfer specialist Obopay, Nokia Money's going to be shown at Nokia World next week on its way to a rollout in select markets early next year.
Neither mobile banking apps nor mobile payment technologies are anything new, but the depth of Visa's newfound commitment to anything and everything mobile here is pretty unique. The company has announced a slew of initiatives to make it as frighteningly easy as possible for cardholders to do cool things with their accounts right from their phones starting with the launch of the 
