It looks like RIM is hoping to expand the capabilities of its BBM platform beyond mere text messaging, and over in Indonesia the Canadian company has announced that they will be launching BBM Money. In case the name itself wasn’t obvious or didn’t give away any clues, BBM Money is RIM’s expansion of its BBM platform which will now allow BBM users to send other BBM users money, making it a pretty useful and convenient tool to conduct transactions on the go. The money sent to users can then be withdrawn via bank cash machines which sounds like a pretty straightforward solution.
So why Indonesia, you ask? Why not somewhere like the US market, or even Canada? Well if you’ve met anyone from Indonesia, they can tell you that Blackberry phones are extremely popular over there, but if you want something a little more concrete, Blackberry currently holds a 56% market share (at least according to RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins). Apart from the dominance of Blackberry devices, it seems that in Indonesia, setting up peer-to-peer transactions via BBM is the norm, so now being able to pay the seller via BBM Money would make things a lot more convenient, especially when carrying around huge amounts of cash is not viable.
No word on when exactly this service will launch, or if it will see a launch outside of Indonesia (we expect that Indonesia will be the testing grounds of this new service), but we will keep our eyes peeled nonetheless.
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