RIM today announced that they're making use of that MasterCard PayPass certification for a near-field communications-enabled mobile wallet in Turkey. The Turkcell BlackBerry Bold 9900 will be spearheading the new contactless payment scheme, though it's easy to imagine the wealth of other NFC BlackBerry devices getting in on the service too - especially the BlackBerry Curve 9360, since it's already certified. Transactions under a certain amount won't need a PIN to be entered, ensuring you can tap and go with ease, but for anything over 35 Turkish Lira (or roughly $20), you'll need to authenticate. 

Before getting too cynical about RIM paying attention to everywhere but North America, it's worth noting that Turkey is huge. There are 72 million people there, with 66 million cell phones in use as of 2009. Just to put that in perspective, here in Canada we've got about 24 million mobiles running among 34 million people. 

Regardless, it'll be great when PayPass with mobile NFC lands here at home, and BlackBerry can start giving Google Wallet a bit of honest competition.  Keep reading for the full press release.

Continue reading article

 

Mastercard has finally released a version of their MoneySend application for BlackBerry devices. The application, is designed to make sending and receiving money from debit, credit, and prepaid Mastercard cards easier. It's not without it's minor flaws though. First, the application only works for the US. Secondly, your bank has to be on board for it to be supported. However, those issues aside it does offer some great features which could make it quite useful to some folks out there.

Features include:

• Accept credit or debit card payments from anyone for free.
• Send money to family members Sending fees apply.
• Pay for informal goods and services.
• Request money from people who owe you money.
• Simplify your business or non-profit collection effort using Request Funds feature
• View your MoneySend transaction history from your mobile phone

All in all, useful to some but for others maybe not so much. You can grab the application from BlackBerry App World. If you're looking to learn more you can hit the link below and head on over to the MoneySend website. It has plenty of details on support and how to get your services all set up.

• Click Here To Learn More About Mastercard MoneySend For BlackBerry >>