Nokia launches payment service for mobile phones

Nokia, recognizing that a huge disparity exists between the number of individuals who have mobile phones and the number who have bank accounts, has launched a new mobile financial service called Nokia Money. The new service will let users send and receive money, pay bills and manage money with just a phone number.

On its surface Nokia Money sounds very similar to PayPal, but the service is expected to offer deeper money management abilities from a cell phone. One of the core reasons that Nokia developed the service, which will work with most mobile phones, was to extend financial services to millions of individuals who do not have bank accounts.

Mary McDowell, EVP and Chief Development Officer for Nokia specifically pointed to the fact that, "many mobile phone users have very limited or no access to basic financial services. With more than four billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, global demand for access to financial services presents a strong opportunity to combine mobile devices with simple but powerful financial services such as Nokia Money."