It was no surprise to discover recently that everybody’s favourite web behemoth Google, now has its eyes firmly set on m-commerce. After all, it’s running out of sectors to dominate. The firm recently applied for a patent to cover technology that, um, well, Sneak thinks it’s something to do with SMS texts and billing.

The patent application describes a system which includes “receiving at a computer server system a text message from a payor containing a payment request representing a payment amount sent by a payor device operating independently of the computer server system, determining a payment amount associated with the text message and debiting a payor account for an amount corresponding to the amount of the payment request, and crediting an account of a payee that is independent of the computer server system”.

Apart from being the longest sentence Sneak has ever read – and he’s met some cunning linguists in his time – this could be bad news for any minnows in the mobile payments space. Now, if you’ll excuse Sneak, there are some shares I need to buy…

04 Sep 2007