PayPal mobile debuts in Australia

PayPal yesterday undertook some public relations, and has begun marketing in Australia, its "mobile checkout" service that debuted in the US, Canada and Britain four months ago.

Mobile payments, while obviously a fine idea, is proving thorny to execute and to make commercial in practice.

At PayPal customers have to enrol in the service first (one barrier), and go through a payment process ("two clicks and entry of a mobile PIN", in theory) and be familiar with the multimedia services of their mobile phone. PayPal also has to sign up merchants to the service and market the availability and merit of this payment option.

A hunt through news services and payments blogs yesterday found some favourable commentary on PayPal's mobile checkout at the time of the July launch of the service and very little since, which suggests the northern hemisphere launch of mobile checkout hasn't found much early traction.