The New York Times is reporting that PayPal is seeking new ways to use its payment system.
PayPal held its first developer conference in San Francisco to officially open its platform to software developers wanting to include payments in their Web or cellphone applications.
With the new platform, any software developer can embed PayPal’s technology in an application. An application could be as simple as ordering and then paying for a pizza with one click on a cellphone. Or it could be as intricate as a way for corporate accounting departments to pay vendors without mailing checks.
In the past, when someone wanted to use PayPal to check out, they generally had to open a new window and enter their PayPal log-in information. As a result, PayPal has missed out on a lot of the virtual goods business, which has instead gone to start-ups like Zong that let people enter their cellphone number and avoid interrupting a virtual game. Now, a PayPal pop-up box will open within a game or Web site.
PayPal has also been missing out on microtransactions, the small sums paid for a product online, like a single article or a day-long subscription to an online publication. People did not want to log in to their PayPal accounts to pay such small amounts of money. Now, a buyer can agree to give the seller a certain amount and the seller can collect the money at any time, so a reader could buy a $50 subscription and subtract 50 cents for each article.
Photo by PayPal.