Nokia announced few days ago in a press release its new mobile financial service, Nokia Money which will offer to consumers basic financial services access from their mobile like sending money to another person using the person’s mobile number, paying for goods and services, paying utility bills or recharging prepaid SIM cards. Nokia says to have designed it to be easy to use and as simple as making a phone call. The service is based on the Obopay platform that Nokia invested in earlier this year.

Nokia Money service will be shown at Nokia World on 2 – 3 September 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany and it is planned to be rolled out gradually to selected markets beginning of 2010.
Today it is already possible to make payments via mobile phone mainly SMS payments. Most of these applications are limited to $200 as maximum charge. The sum will appear on your mobile bill or directly deduced from your prepaid card. Sending money to a mobile number is not either a new solution, there are many services offering this solution already like TextPayMe, Mobibucks, PayPay or Buxfer
However, Nokia will certainly benefit from its large user base to market their service. (Nokia estimated mobile device market share of 38% in Q2 2009).
It is nice to have mobile banking but the question remains is it affordable?
The business model is still unknown but I suspect it would be based on commissions per transaction as all similar services do.

Will Nokia change this model and introduce a FREE mobile financial service supported by ads?