While reading through BlackBerry-related news yesterday, I saw a post that our friend Ronen published on BerryReview pertaining to BBM Money.

Here’s whats new: In the first 90 days since launching BBM Money in Indonesia, the service has in excess of 60,000 users registered.  It’s not exactly a huge number, but apparently the target is to grow this user base to 200,000 by the end of the current year.  Sounds like they are well on their way to achieving this goal.

Keep in mind BBM Money can only be used by BlackBerry customers today.  And it can only be used to send money between BBM users, or to top up your mobile account.  It only exists in Indonesia today, where most BlackBerry hardware is running the legacy BBOS, and the devices don’t have features such as near field communications (NFC) to permit “tap to pay” type functionality.

So BlackBerry Messenger is finally going cross platform, eh? For quite some time now most of you at CrackBerry Nation have believed this should happen. In fact during 2010 (when the stock was still around $60), CrackBerry ran a poll asking you all if the company should take BBM cross platform.

Guess what?  A whopping 71% of you said yes, it should go cross platform. Our own fearless leader, Kevin, is clearly on record saying BBM should be opened up. Here’s what he wrote in November 2010:

”So should RIM do it? Personally, I think they should. I get the reasons why they wouldn't. RIM makes money from selling smartphones, and right now BlackBerry Messenger is one of those hooks that keeps people on BlackBerry and actually attracts some people to BlackBerry (I've heard stories from carrier reps where individuals walk into the store and ask for the phone that does BBM). But I don't think this reasoning holds up long-term. As soon as a cross-platform BBM-style client emerges in the smartphone space and attains critical mass (ie. Kik or another), even if not as fully-featured as BlackBerry Messenger the hook of BBM starts to diminish.“