Eduardo Saverin-backed Jumio soon launching mobile payments service

After selling his latest company, Jajah, to Telefonica for $207 million a year ago, co-founder Daniel Mattes has set his sights on the electronic payments market.
Mattes, who has apparently been baptized the “Bill Gates of the Alps”, has started a new company called Jumio.
Not much is known about the company to date, and this is its vague pitch on the website:
“You buy. You sell. And Jumio is making everything in between a lot easier.”

Jumio is still gearing up for the launch of its online and mobile payments solution, due for release in 6 to 8 weeks, but the company has lined up an investor that is sure to draw even more attention to the stealth startup than the recent appointment of Google, Amazon and NASA vets to its board of directors.

Jumio, the new technology that turns webcams into credit card readers, is now offering a plugin for WordPress websites. The new Jumio Netswipe add-on allows website visitors to pay for products or make donations quickly and easily, just by holding up their credit card to their computer’s webcam.

Much of what Jumio is building is still very unclear, but chances are this will become one of the hottest startups in 2011, and not just because they hire opera singers to tease their upcoming mobile payments product.
This morning, the company announced part of its advisory board, also revealing that its payment solution is now in the final stages of development.

Card.io, the mobile commerce company started by two former AdMob employees, Mike Mettler and Josh Bleecher Snyder, is launching a software development kit (SDK) for Android today.

According to informed sources cited by Bloomberg, Google plans to announce a new mobile payment service at an event in new York City on Thursday, May 26. Bloomberg reports that the service will first be available to Sprint customers using the Samsung Nexus S 4G. The service will make use of the Nexus S 4G's support for near-field communications in order to help consumers make mobile payments at participating retailers. The service will first be available in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., though at what retail locations, Bloomberg didn't say.

Well, isn't that just an adorable quirk of corporate timing? RIM just announced that BlackBerry App World 2.1 is now live with support for in-app payments using the BlackBerry Payment Service, matching Google's similar Android Market announcement earlier today.

MetroPCS today announced that it has partnered with Mobile Content Ventures in order to launch a live, local broadcast television service on MetroPCS mobile phones later this year. The service, called Dyle Mobile TV, will provide live TV content from 15 major broadcast groups, such as Cox, Gannett, Hearst, FOX, NBC, Univision, Telemundo, and others. MetroPCS expects the service to offer more than 72 stations in 32 markets covering more than 50% of the U.S. population.