PayPal says mobile payments exploded on Black Friday

Mobile phone-based purchases surged on Black Friday 2009 according to industry data reviewed by Dow Jones. Mobile online payments through PayPal were up nearly 650 percent year-over-year, the eBay-owned payment solutions provider said, crediting retailer efforts to make it easier to shop and complete purchases via mobile devices as well as the growing proliferation of smartphones.   

Searches from mobile devices increased from about 5,000 on Black Friday 2008 to about 200,000 this year according to product search engine TheFind.com, which says consumers were using their phones to compare prices while inside brick-and-mortar retail outlets. TheFind.com notes that online retailer Amazon.com generated about six times the number of search hits as Wal-Mart, a disparity attributed to Amazon's price reductions as well as the absence of sales tax from virtual sales.

For more on m-commerce's Black Friday surge:
- read this Wall Street Journal article

Related articles:
PayPal opens payments platform to developers
PayPal introduces Android application