Paypal has been available for a few months in South Africa, and the uptake has been a bit slow so far in my experience. I would have thought that e-commerce websites in SA would have jumped at the chance to use Paypal. I do like the idea behind Paypal – never having to expose my credit card details online, and I always use it when I am given the choice.

Clearly FNB is trying to foster some development in this regard, and the prizes are quite big:

First National Bank (FNB) and PayPal today announced a new competition to award developers who create innovative applications using PayPal’s payment platform.

The local winner of the FNB and PayPal X Award will receive a trip to the United States to attend PayPal’s second annual Innovate Conference, which is taking place 26 and 27 October. The prize will include airfare, accommodation, meals, conference costs, visa expenses and insurance to an approximate value of $10,000. In addition, developers will also be automatically entered into PayPal’s X Developer Challenge and could receive an award totalling up to $100,000 in prizes.

This year’s PayPal X Innovate 2010 conference will be held at Moscone West in San Francisco. The conference will feature presentations from industry experts, new product announcements and sessions that will give developers the tools and support they need to create the future of payments.

“The first FNB and PayPal X Award seeks to reward South Africa’s entrepreneurial spirit and jump start local innovation and new business ventures,” said Chris Savides, General Manager, FNB Complementary Online Services.

PayPal opened its application programming interfaces (APIs) last year, giving developers around the world the ability to monetize their ideas and build new payment applications on new devices and development platforms.

“PayPal has always stood for innovation in payments,” said Oded Zehavi, regional director of PayPal Israel and South Africa. “We are excited to partner with FNB to encourage developers to build their dream apps and make payments safer and easier for people in South Africa.”

How to enter

To submit for the FNB and PayPal X Award, log on to x.com and click to register for the PayPal X Developer Challenge. Select the box for the FNB and PayPal X Award.

It’s been a big week for the South African internet economy. First MWEB started a broadband price war with their uncapped ADSL offering and now Pay Pal and FNB have announced that they’ve entered into an agreement to bring Pay Pal to South Africa. This enables South Africans to sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)

This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.

Michael Jordaan, FNB’s Chief Executive Officer had this to say -

“We are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as South Africans will be able to join the global eCommerce marketplace. Our agreement with PayPal also enables international businesses and individuals to transact with South African service providers via a secure and convenient payment gateway”

Pay Pal concluded -

“FNB and PayPal have a similar focus on innovation, so it makes sense that we would work with FNB to make online payments even easier for merchants and consumers in South Africa,” said Oded Zehavi, head of PayPal’s business in Israel and South Africa.

FNB Customers can simply open a PayPal account and link it to a qualified FNB account and receive PayPal payments in 21 different currencies. FNB will convert the currency to South African Rand, when the money is transferred into their accounts.

Twitter is buzzing with the news.

Nokia dominates the world cell phone market share and with such a huge customer base it’s no surprise why they’d like to delve deep into this an use it for further profits with a real time monetary service.

It looks like the Finish folks will be presenting the Nokia Money module — an elementary banking and money transfer service, at the Nokia World conference which is to be held next week. The service that will be rolled out next year in a selective number of markets will be an effective electronic money transfer tool, a money management system where the customer will only be required to know the phone number of the receipt of money. Smells like mobile Paypal?

The credentials of the service quality cannot be doubted for it will involve Nokia’s money and mobile money transfer specialist Obopay’s brain.

Rumors about the Apple Pay Pal Killer have also surfaced from time to time, but Nokia seems to have one-upped the competition with a mobile version of the money transfer system … something which could have a more far reaching effect.

Source