Sign-up Bonus: Free $15 OboPay PrePaid Credit Card
In celebration of getting $29 million in new financing from investors, Obopay is offering a free $15 Prepaid MasterCard for signing up for their service. They seem to also be a money transfer service like PayPal mobile.
Never carry cash again.
Send money instantly from your cell phone, online, and even AOL Instant Messanger.
Receive money in 10 seconds and spend it with Obopay Prepaid MasterCard?.
The $15 offer expires at the end of July 13th.. The $15 promo is expired, but they are still offering $10 free. There are no monthly maintenance fees for the card. Thanks to Sri for the tip.
Find more in Deals & Offers | 7/13/07, 1:48pm | Trackback
July 13th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
it works! I just got my account verified and its showing balance of $15 in my account
Thanks Jonathan!
July 13th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Got mine too!
July 13th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I love leeching off venture capital money.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Word must be getting around and overloading them a bit. I keep getting this error when trying to verify my identity:
“Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request at this time. We are working on this problem, and functionality will be restored as soon as possible. Please try again later.”
July 13th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Sweet! I just got my money too. Thanks for the post.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Worked for me! Got to love free money.
July 13th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Did not work for me since my mobile phone does have SMS
July 13th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Thanks - just signed up me and my wife. Fast money and might actually be a decent service
July 13th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Nice deal but when did these companies start TAKING money instead of dropping cents in your accout for verification? lol
July 13th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Umm.. how are you suppose to spend it? You have to link up your personal info? Kinda skeptical..
July 13th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I was in the middle of verifying and now the main page says the signup reward is down to $5. I kept getting verification errors, so I wonder if I’ll get $5 or $15.
July 14th, 2007 at 5:41 am
#(&$. Missed the $15. I’m going back to checking this site twice a day.
July 14th, 2007 at 7:16 am
brilliant!
this service has been around in the philippines for many years and it works very well!!
thanks so much!!!
July 14th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Thanks… sign up was easy. Free money is always good!
Here is an ethical question = Do we need to report this moeny to IRS?
July 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am
No, because IRS doesnt report back to us how many people they have screwed.
July 14th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I don’t have my debit card yet, but it appears you can just spend the money like a credit card, or even withdraw from an ATM with no fees from oBoPay.
July 14th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Fees will more than double in September.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:48 am
I received numerous verification error messages. When I went back later to try again, the verification option was gone. If I was verified somehow, then they opted not to give me the money, ’cause my account balance is still zero. Anyone else have this problem?
July 15th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I would say stay away from Obopay.
(1) They said you can add money by doing ACH transfer from your linked bank account. But after you signed up, you will find they don?t offer this option. I called the customer service and they told me it?s their future project, not now. (but you will find it in their “fee schedule” and it looks like they already have this feature) In other words, you have to fund your account with credit/debit card and pay 1.5% extra, and there?s no way to get around with it. (2) Also when I withdraw to my bank account, they charge me 10 cents which did not listed in their fee schedule. I feel this company is not in a honest condition and would never do business with them. I will just stay with PayPal now.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Justin,
It’s free money!!
I wonder if u use ur credit card, do u get the 1% cash back? Which will almost balance out the transfer fee
July 16th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Hey Nony-mouse,
Yes I did use 1% cash back credit card to fund the account and I withdrew all the money plus bonus back to my bank account. That’s all I would do. I would never give them my SSN or anything else to get their debit card, which you can only use it without extra charge on making purchase. If you use their debit card at any ATM, though they don’t charge you, the ATM owner will, and certainly do, charge you. I can’t see any reason to have their debit card.
Besides, (1) I think this is a stupid invention. I don’t like to use cellphone to send money. (2)Non of their service is free. I’d just stay with PayPal, which is free for personal account. (3) They will double the price very soon. (4) They are not honest on their fee schedule.
I am going to close my obopay account.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Hmmm…….giving them SS# for verification? Are they going for a hard credit pull? On the other hand, they also give you an option of using Driver License for verification purpose. What are they trying to verify anyway?
July 28th, 2007 at 6:23 am
I got in on the free $15 and ordered the debit card which came in a timely fashion. The one thing that is not timely is adding money to the card from a bank account. It took three business days for the debit to hit the bank account. It showed up this morning. The credit still isn’t showing on the obopay account. Since I’m just playing with it, I’m not concerned but I would certainly be hesitant to depend on this service for something serious.
Paypal doesn’t have cell phone money transfer (yet) but they are much faster and you actually earn something on the money sitting in a Paypal account. If obopay expects to succeed they will have to improve the speed of the add money function.
July 28th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Correction: just noticed that Paypal does have cell phone transfer now.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I didn’t give them SSN. My $15 showed up fine. I decided not to ask for the debit card and just linked up a bank account and withdrew the money with no issues.
PayPal Mobile has been around for several months now (also got a bonus when that started), but I don’t see either of them getting traction just yet.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Now it’s just $5. I’m glad I got in when it was still 10!!
August 4th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Update: It took a full week for the money transferred from my bank account to show up in the Obopay account. I emailed them about it and they said they are working on setting up a faster system.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:38 am
I got in on the $10. Verification was easy, and I transferred the $10 back to my bank account. I should probably close my Obopay account now since I know that I will never be using it, and I don’t want to be hit with a fee in the future.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
It’s now $10, at least at the time of this comment.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Jonathan,
How did you manage to open the account without giving them your SS#? My application can’t go through without it. Any thoughts on using a bogus SS#?
Thanks!
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 am
I have the debit card and received a mail saying that they are adding a monthly fee of $4.95 starting from 11/27. If you are not using the card, it is time to cancel!
December 15th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Customers that sign up with a bogus SSN will not go through. Obopay currently uses Equifax to verify customer’s identity, to keep fraud from happening. That’s pretty smart, if you ask me. There is a monthly maintenance fee if you do not load funds every month. And you only receive $10 if you load $10 onto your card and send a person to person. If you’ve got a friend on Obopay, send the $10 to them, have them send it back to you.. still a free $10.