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eCommerce - Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Cell Phone Wallet's KushCash Raises $12M

If you assume that the turf over payments is only being fought between Google and Paypal, some investors are betting that you have it wrong. A fair number of startups think they have a better answer to the emerging habit of paying by cell phone and are raising war chests.

KushCash recently raised $12M in private investment. Orange County-based Kushcash was backed by $1.2M in friends-and-family seed money, and then closed a $11M private investment from angels.

Kushcash turns to Orange County Hotties for promotion. View - site

KushCash competes with several other VC-backed startups including: Obopay, MobileLime, Get Scoot and TextPayMe.

Obopay received $10M in March from Redpoint Ventures, Onset Ventures, and Richmond Capital. It also acquired Bill Monk. View - Obopay site

In March 2006, Seattle-based MobileLime raised $11.4M Series A from Ignition Partners, Seapoint Ventures and Oak Investment Partners. MobileLime has acquired another startup - Cuesol - and has expanded from its core mobile wallet business to also do mobile promotions and loyalty programs. View - MobileLime site

TextPayMe is a Redmond, WA based company was founded by two former Microsoft employees. TextPayMe gets high marks for perhaps being the easiest to use. Users just send a text message with amount and recipient's phone number and within minutes you receive an automated confirmation call confirming the funds were transferred. TextPayMe is offering a $5 reward for referrals. View - Textpayme site

We are going to add one more. View - site