We got a chance to hang at the eBay campus today here in San Jose today, where PayPal held an event to show off what its next steps in the retail space are. The result? PayPal announced some new partnerships with existing POS companies for mid-market businesses to help extend its service into offline sales.
We knew that PayPal had some bigger plans for the retail space, and now we know that it’s taking said space seriously with this new initiative. We’ve seen PayPal Payments, PayPal Here (which has seen more than 300,000 business on board), and now we’re going to see the company in more stores than ever before.
The retail space is changing and PayPal isn’t looking to just get in on some of the action in that area. As Don Kingsborough, Vice President of Retail and Prepaid ops mentions, in the not too distant future that customers will be able to pay with PayPal just about everywhere they are, whether its online, on mobile, or offline. PayPal is looking to become a ubiquitous payment solution across all roads, and it’s well on its way to doing just that.
PayPal is also partnering with many other companies that include the likes of Home Depot, Jamba Juice, JC Penny, Foot Locker, and more in its journey for ubiquity. We’ll soon have much more to hear from the company, as David Marcus said to “stay tuned” and we aren’t surprised. The partnerships between PayPal and retailers – large and small will continue to grow and it doesn’t look like they will slow down or be stopped any time soon.
While the announcement of its new partnerships isn’t necessarily mobile, the updated PayPal mobile application ties it all together. Currently only available on iOS at the moment, PayPal Mobile allows the user to “Check in” to a shop, where they will pop up in the merchant’s list of customers checked into the store. When it’s time for the customer to pay, the merchant can find the customer in the app and immediately charge items to their PayPal account. No wallet required.
PayPal has successfully found a way for businesses to let customers pay with its service without the need of replacing existing POS systems, and we’d say it’s a pretty smart move.
Hit up the PayPal Blog for more!