MasterCard

Earlier this summer, MasterCard released a mobile payment app for iPhone, which has now found its way to BlackBerry. MoneySend lets you send cash to friends, pay for stuff, or ask for money from others once it’s paired up with your MasterCard and your banking institution. MasterCard had partnerered with Zoompass for contactless payment stickers, and has had an ATM Hunter app for awhile, but MoneySend strikes me as the most useful of the batch. Quickly and easily sending your friends money when you’re out of cash and there’s no ATM nearby can be a hassle. The token “poor student asking mom and dad for money” situation illustrates how well this works for long-distance situations, too. Registering and downloading MoneySend for BlackBerry is free, but there are some transaction fees you’ll want to keep in mind before you start going crazy sending everyone you know money from your phone just for the novelty of it. Hit up the MoneySend site to register, or go to the iPhone App Store or BlackBerry App World links below to start downloading. Download MoneySend for BlackBerry (Free) [App World Link] Download MoneySend for iPhone (Free) [iTunes Link] Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out. Read More

You can't pay with your phone at the register yet, but you can use it to pay the babysitter. MoneySend, an application from MasterCard for sending and requesting money in informal person-to-person transactions, is now out in the BlackBerry App World. MasterCard's app lags significantly behind PayPal's mobile payment app, available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry, except perhaps that MasterCard has more cache and credibility with older generations. But MoneySend's shortcomings aside, MasterCard is clearly excited about mobile-enhanced shopping. MoneySend for BlackBerry is the latest in a slew of MasterCard-branded apps including Marketplace Overwhelming Offers, which pushes users steep daily discounts, Easy Savings Program, which locates nearby discounts from participating merchants, Priceless Picks, an app to encourage shoppers to geotag and share deals, and ATM Hunter. MoneySend lets users send, request, receive and manage money from the app. Hook the app up to your bank or credit union and link it to your debit card or MasterCard credit card to send money. You can also create a prepaid account through Bancorp Bank, an FDIC-insured online bank. Then manage your transactions, which are subject to some fees, from within the app. No financial data is stored on the device, according to MasterCard. With MoneySend, both parties have to have the MoneySend app in order to complete a transaction. You can also send money to the mobile phone number of a non-user, who will then get an invite to join MoneySend and pick up the payment. That means until now, a sender would have to be sure the recipient was using an iPhone. There was speculation that MasterCard's mobile payments could compete with PayPal's when the MoneySend iPhone app launched three months ago. That doesn't seem to have happened. MoneySend has three out of five stars in the App Store, compared to four out of five for PayPal. Simply put, PayPal's mobile app is more navigable and less restrictive. Also: PayPal's userbase is larger, you can connect its app to non-MasterCard credit cards and you can first bump to transfer money. But maybe opening MoneySend up to BlackBerry's well-heeled users will encourage adoption. Read More

MasterCard recently launched a new mobile application called "MasterCard Marketplace Overwhelming Offers," which delivers daily deals to iPhone users. Despite its mouthful of a name, savvy shoppers planning on purchasing a big-ticket item in the near future may want to keep an eye on this one. Like the popular Internet retailer Woot (just bought by Amazon), the app provides deeply discounted items, available in limited quantities for a limited time. At 12 p.m. Eastern (GMT - 4:00) every day, a new deal is posted to the mobile app, offering "door-buster" type savings of 50% or more on brand-name products from a network of over 28,000 merchants. The offers are made available thanks to MasterCard's partnership with e-commerce company Next Jump, which already powers the desktop version of the MasterCard Marketplace website, launched in April. Some of the past "OO's" (overwhelming offers), as they're called, have included deals like $100 off flights booked via Priceline.com, $50 off anything at TigerDirect.com, $25 off Target merchandise, $100 off Wal-Mart merchandise, $75 off the Barnes & Noble eBook Reader, $50 off digital cameras at Staples, $100 off a Nintendo Wii from Kmart and much more. There's a game-like element to scoring these deals, too. They launch at a given time and sell out fast - sometimes even in seconds, so you have to be quick to win the chance to purchase these items. To get a heads up about what deal is launching when, shoppers can sign up for email alerts that are sent out several hours prior to the OO start time and detail pricing, quantities available and other descriptive info about the product. And if you're worried that you still might find a better deal by shopping around online, the app has you covered here, too. Instead of purchasing the item immediately from your mobile, you simply "reserve" the item. Of course, to do so, you have to link a MasterCard credit, debit or prepaid card to your account first. You then have up to three days to redeem your reservation. One important item to note, and a big difference between Woot and this app, is that the discounts you receive are not immediate. Instead, they're provided to you as rebates posted to your MasterCard account. You will actually have to buy the item at full price then wait, usually around two weeks, before the credit is posted. At most, according to the Read More

Browsing the App Store this weekend?  Here are thirteen new or updated apps for the iPhone and iPad worth taking a closer look at if you are: If you’re even the slightest bit interested in science and space, then this app is well worth investigating.  Buzz has gathered many experts in various fields including space tourism, deep space and the exploration of Mars and the Moon to provide informative content, plus extras including live streaming NASA TV  $1.99/£1.19. Designed for both the iPhone and the iPad, this beautifully realised wooden ruler app has a marker for keeping your spot as you measure.  $0.99/£0.59. Best used with an iPhone 3GS, this text capture app will recognize and convert anything from business cards to entire magazine pages.  With captured numbers, URLs or email addresses, a simple tap will call or open an email or Safari page.  $1.99/£1.19. Help little Polly escape from her dream world, where there are all sorts of scary things waiting to frighten her, and get back to her bedroom.  A platform game with puzzles, Polly Bad Dream looks pretty surreal and as her abilities are limited, we expect it to be quite a challenge too.  $0.99/£0.59. The iPhone version has been around for a while, but now we have an iPad-specific version of the bread-based shooter.  There is a Time Trial and a Long Run version of the game, with the first being limited to 2 minutes play and the second based around your ‘Jelly Power’ energy levels.  $0.99/£0.59. A game based on the song of the same name, by Katrina and the Waves.  The gameplay looks simple enough as you flick clouds away and collected energy from the sun to help the Earth grow stronger.  It also has the world premiere of the song sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir.  $0.99/£0.59. Another iPhone app conversion, this time one which will really make use of the larger screen!  Make really striking images by changing them to black and white, but then keeping certain sections in color.  A video tutorial will get you started and there is also an undo and a save feature.  $1.99/£1.19. Kill all the horrible germs that have escaped from a laboratory!  There are 30 levels to this puzzle game, whose simple control system involves dragging germs until the collide with others or fall from the screen.  $1.99/£1.19. Updated to fix some crash issues, this iPad Read More

Using MasterCard's MoneySend application, iPhone and iPad users will be able to send or receive money using their phone or tablet, the card company said on Thursday. MoneySend only works in the U.S. and the service can be used for everyday payments to the babysitter or a child at college who is low on funds, or to let someone else pay back a loan, according to MasterCard. The application is free and available for download from the iPhone App Store. For MoneySend to work, it has to be linked to a MasterCard debit, credit, or prepaid account from a bank that offers the service. If the iPhone owner's bank does not issue a compatible card, then they can sign up for a prepaid MoneySend card and account with Bancorp Bank. In either case, they will need a U.S. mobile phone number. Sending money costs US$0.29 for transfers up to $50, $0.99 for transfers up to $200, and $2.95 over that. There is no charge for receiving money. The maximum amount of money a user can send with MoneySend is $2,500 per month, according to an MasterCard FAQ. The account is identified by the mobile phone number, and is protected by a passcode. No account information is stored on the iPad or iPhone, according to MasterCard. The card companies are slowly stepping up their mobile efforts in developed countries. For example, MasterCard also offers an iPhone application called ATM Hunter, which lets users find the nearest ATM using GPS. Soon, competing card company Visa expects to begin trials of a contactless payments system for Apple's iPhone, using a special case for the phone developed by DeviceFidelity. There are also other companies that see opportunities in the mobile money space, including Square. Started by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, Square lets anyone accept payments using a card reader that hooks into headphone jack of an iPhone, an iPod touch or a number of Android-based smartphones. Read More

For those needing some cold, hard money, MasterCard has released an ATM Hunter application for BlackBerry, allowing you to quickly home in on cash machines close to your GPS location, or within the area of a designated address. ATMs can be filtered based on what services you’re looking for: drive-through, 24-hour access, wheelchair access, and even find which ones don’t have an added surcharge. As handy as this app is, I think Zoompass is a much more interesting mobile project that MasterCard is involved with, but depending on where you spend your time, it might be hard finding a cash machine – I would cache this one on your microSD card for those odd situations. MasterCard has ATM Hunter available for iPhone as well, along with a few other mobile services, if you’re looking to get your phone totally decked-out. Download ATM Hunter for BlackBerry (Free) [App World Link] Download ATM Hunter for iPhone (Free) [iTunes Link] Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out. Read More

Priceless Picks is a unique application that is trying to create a web off user-tagged deals and points of interest in a visually pleasing way. The app is a collection of different location-based points that can be browsed through by dragging your finger along virtual map of the area that you are located in. Because it uses location awareness, it is hard for iPod Touch users to use this app. Points of interest pop up in different colored bubbles with some text about why there is something interesting at that location. Most of the bubbles are different advertisements from the company itself on different products that are on sale. This is sometimes annoying but the good thing is that different categories can be turned off and on. The app overall becomes a collection of what people think is interesting as well as different products that companies want to sell. While the idea itself is a fun one, the overall usability of this app is somewhat pointless. Scrolling through the area hoping to stumble upon something interesting is a lame way to find deals or different interesting spots. So the app becomes basically more of a marketing tool than a useful application. This is why I can't really recommend downloading it. It is fun to see how we can interact with a well-designed interface, but the app is basically pointless. It is free in the app store, so check it out and see for yourself. Read More