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Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) is to offer Obopay's mobile person-to-person payment service to FIS's roughly 1700 bank customers, the pair announced at BAI's Retail Delivery show. Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS is starting to sign up interested banks, Kishore Bayyapureddy, senior vice president of FIS told BS&T.

A P-to-P service was second on the wish list of banks to which FIS provides core processing, when FIS polled them at its user conference in April, added Bayyapureddy, who is also FIS's general manager of epayments. "Things have changed since then in the economy," he says, "but this is something that can provide income."

Banks will determine how they price the service, he says, adding that it's likely most will charge a percentage of the amount sent.

That would make it more lucrative than the service Obopay offers direct to consumers currently, for which it charges senders just 25 cents to send a payment over the ACH network while recipients are charged nothing. Payments can also be sent using the bankcard network.

Obopay also launched a P to P service for Citi customers in mid-October and announced plans last June to integrate its capabilities with Mastercard's network for sending money from one debit or credit card holder to another. Michael Diamond, SVP of business development with Obopay, said "real money" was being sent by Citi customers. No banks are yet using the Mastercard service, which, Diamond says, requires some technical development work.

The new FIS deal is Obopay's second business relationship with the firm. Obopay users send money from pre-funded accounts specially created for P-to-P payments. In September, Obopay began to issue its own stored value cards (through issuing bank, Bancorp.) and a different division of Fidelity processed those debit transactions.

Rodney Robinson, vice president of business solutions with Redwood City, Calif.-based Obopay, said Fidelity's bank customers interested in the newly offered P to P service can readily link to Obopay's system via their Fidelity banking system (for ACH) or their ATM switch (for debit card transactions). Senders can also draw funds from a credit card but recipients cannot yet be paid to a credit card.