阅读理解
On a PC (个人电脑), having to fill out a form and type in a credit card number to buy something
is only mildly annoying. On a cellphone, it could make you want to skip the purchase entirely.
This is why investors, startups (初创企业) and major corporations are pouring money into
services that make it easier to use cellphones to buy goods and transfer money. The aim is to turn
phones into virtual credit cards or checkbooks, enabling the kind of clickandbuy commerce and online
banking that people have come to expect on their PCs. But shrinking down (缩小) those services
presents serious challenges.
The services must work on many different phones and through many cellphone service providers,
which usually control the billing relationships with customers. That adds complexity to the already tricky
business of safely and securely transferring funds among financial institutions and merchants.
Mobile payment systems have been tried before, with only modest success. Driving a new flurry
(一阵兴奋) of deal making, industry analysts and executives say, is the success of the iPhone,
BlackBerry and other sophisticated (尖端的) devices. These phones make complex interactions easier.
Now the race is on to develop new payment systems-and to get several percentage points in fees
from each transaction. They're seeing that returns could be so huge. Obopay, a startup that lets people
transmit money to one another via text message, raised $ 35 million from Nokia's investment. Also, a
mobile payments startup called Boku announced that it had received $ 13 million in venture capital
financing.
When people can use their phone numbers to make a purchase, they are 10 times as likely to follow
through on a transaction as when they have to type in credit card and billing information, said David
Marcus, chief executive of a startup called Zong.
Mobile payment companies also need to get cooperation from merchants, which must add a payment
option to their mobile sites or applications.
But the potential opportunity to get fees from the growing number of mobile transactions is too
__juicy__to__pass__up,__despite the risks, said an analyst with IDC Financial Insights, a market
research company.
1. From the passage, we should face ________ great difficulties while purchasing
through cellphones instead of PCs.
A. one
B. two
C. three
D. four
2. According to the passage, using phones to make a purchase is ________.
A. expensive
B. convenient
C. troublesome
D. impossible
3. What does the underlined phrase "too juicy to pass up" in the last paragraph probably mean?
A. Too profitable to ignore.
B. Too difficult to seize.
C. Too heavy to lift.
D. Too unsafe to handle.
4. What would be the best title for the passage?
A. The Benefit of Purchasing via Cellphone
B. The Great Risks on Payments via Cellphone
C. How to Deal with Payments via Cellphone
D. Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone
