LAS VEGAS--Using the only Magic to rival that of Disney’s Magic Kingdom, PayPal President Jeff Jordan brought former NBA star and now entrepreneur Magic Johnson on stage to help present the company's new PayPal Mobile payment solution.

Returning to its roots as a payment solution for Palm mobile devices--an idea too far ahead of its time admits Jordan--PayPal introduced the text message-based service, which will allow consumers in the U.S. and Canada to send money anytime, from anywhere, using their mobile telephones.

Hoping to do for m-commerce what it did for eBay and other online e-commerce companies, PayPal believes the time has now come for person-to-person and person-to-enterprise mobile payments.

“Some people say that mobile commerce is two years away. We don’t buy that. That two years is history,” Jordan said.

After helping eBay automate its payments, PayPal subscribers increased from just over 12,000 users to more than 1 million in four months in 2000. Jordan said that with consumer confidence in e-commerce at an all-time high, the time is right to put the two together.

“The promise of mobile commerce has never been better,” Jordan said.

Using PayPal Mobile, users can send money, purchase items or donate to charities from their mobile devices. Using PayPal Mobile's Text to Buy service, consumers can buy things instantly, such as CDs, DVDs, shoes and apparel, by sending product codes via text message.

PayPal demonstrated the service buying a DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It then brought Johnson onstage to drive home the importance of mobile payments to charities using the company’s Text to Give service. The service uses PIN protection and confirmation call-back to ensure security.

Johnson thanked PayPal for doing a wonderful job helping his organization, the Magic Johnson Foundation and reminded attendees that by 2015 half the U.S. population will be minority and that payment methods such as this might be a good way to reach them.