PayPal plans to let shoppers pay with its service in more than 2,000 stores as part of an effort to win away customers from credit-card companies. This push for mobile probably shouldn’t be surprising, as we know that its owners eBay also is going big on mobile. The company has already deployed its new service in a trial at 51 Home Depot’s, primarily in the San Francisco area, according to Anuj Nayar, a spokesman for PayPal.
The giant e-commerce payment business feels really confident about this being a game changer in its future business.
“This is the beginning of a fundamental change in the company,” Nayar said. “What we are finally rolling out will ultimately be, in part, an international phenomenon. It’s a change in how retailers and consumers are going to connect.”
There’s no question that the company’s mobile payment volume is growing, with projections of a $7 billion rise this year from $4 billion last year. This move by PayPal is brilliant, why pay Visa and MasterCard for its offline services when you can create your own? That said, we need to know how using this new service will benefit PayPal users specifically. For those of us who live through our PayPal accounts (debit cards), all hope PayPal lowers its transaction fees by creating its own terminal service, if not, this new experiment is all for nothing.
[via Businessweek]