PayPal continues push towards in-store payments
updated 02:50 pm EST, Mon February 6, 2012
PayPal mission not fazed by CEO departure
Despite the abrupt leaving of its CEO in January, PayPal is unfazed in its mission to make money off in-store payments, AllThingsD learned. Owned by eBay, the outfit had a number of demonstration set-ups of a grocery store, hardware store, and clothing store. In the San Jose area, PayPal has working registers set up in numerous Home Depot locations as part of a pilot program.
The CEO having left is not a big setback to PayPal, according to David Marcus, PayPals VP of mobile, as its two-year plan was in place before the CEO left. The company will try to convert its 106 million online consumers into physical users thanks to digital wallet services in stores. PayPal will use PIN codes and credit cards along with other tech in its efforts, but initially stay away from NFC in smartphones, as most other companies do.
"Yes, NFC will be useful, and we'll be there, but today we are trying to do more than replace swiping with tapping," said Marcus. He went on to say point-of-sales terminals will be less common in the future.
These could include paying for purchases before even getting to the store, and simply picking them up. PayPal will make money from each transaction, and hopes to sweeten the deal for retailers by offering perks such as loyalty programs, shopping lists, credit options, or coupons.
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Joined: Feb 2012
PayPal/PreyPal
PreyPal is little more than a clumsy, fraud-enabling middleman the use of which also nullifies the statutory protections that, in many countries, would otherwise be available to users paying directly via a real bank’s credit card.
Then there is PreyPal’s current testing of “mobile payments” at POS in Home Depot stores. Are people actually leaving their funds “on deposit” with this clunky, unlicensed, prudentially unregulated, PayPal “non-bank” that is itself not even licensed to provide credit? Otherwise, how are the funds for such mobile payments being sourced by PreyPal from the payer’s real banking account in a way that the merchant can be sure of ultimately getting paid by PreyPal? Not with the standard non-guarantee of payment that PreyPal serves up to its online merchants, I hope.
And, unfortunately for eBay’s chief headless turkey, Visa’s professional online offering “V.me”, when it is up and running later this year, will undoubtedly put paid to whatever success that the clunky PreyPal has had with professional online merchants outside of its mandated use on the eBay Marketplace. And soon thereafter both these unscrupulous and clunky entities should commence/continue their long-deserved journeys down the gurgler.
Scott Thompson saw the writing on the wall; John Donahoe remains delusional, that fact confirmed by the reported sightings of him waving his mobile phone about and mumbling about UFO sightings over San Jose.
eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking