'Net Features : paypal

PayPal Comes to Mojaba Mobile Sites

Allison Howen — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:45:00 GMT

Web workers building a mobile website with Mojaba can now accept PayPal payments thanks to a new integration between the companies.

The PayPal integration enables Mojaba users to add the PayPal element to a panel. Then, users simply need to configure the PayPal account information, pricing options and successful purchase message so that consumers can make secure purchases with their smartphones. Moreover, customers have the option to log in to PayPal or pay with a debit or credit card. After customers place their order and confirm the purchase, they are returned back to the mobile website and all payments are processed on PayPal’s website.

“We couldn’t be more excited to work with Torsion Mobile as they expand their mobile website software, Mojaba,” said Eddie Davis, Senior Director of Sales at PayPal. ”Businesses that Torsion Mobile serves don’t want to miss sales opportunities because they can’t accept the payment type their customers may use. They want quick access to their money, a reliable card reader, and one transparent, low fee to process these payments. Mojaba for PayPal brings all of these features together into a product that’s simple to use.”

It is important to note that in order to leverage this functionality, users must have a Mojaba website with an annual subscription as well as a PayPal account.

PayPal Paves the Future of Mobile Commerce

Allison Howen — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:00:00 GMT

A new study by ShopVisible reveals that alternative payments are paving the way of mobile commerce.

The study tracked 23,000 Web and mobile transactions. The results revealed that in thousands of mobile transactions, 67 percent of customers used PayPal or an alternative payment method, while only 33 percent chose to pay by credit card. Conversely, the results were reversed in web-only transactions – with 62 percent of shoppers choosing to pay by credit card, 12.9 percent paying with Amazon Payments, 8.1 percent with Google Checkout and only 16.8 percent paying via PayPal.

According to the results of this study, alternative payments are a very important factor within mobile commerce, which is projected to reach $31 billion by 2016 according to Forrester Research.

“These results decipher some of the code to unlocking the potential of mobile commerce,” says Sean Cook, CEO of ShopVisible. “Mobile is a different animal, as this research shows. Lacking a simple alternative payment method could crush any retailer implementing a mobile commerce strategy. Even if alternative payment methods don’t constitute a large percentage of your existing web business, you should reconsider the relative importance when it comes to your mobile strategy.”

Miva Merchant Adds Payment and Checkout Options

Linc Wonham — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:30:00 GMT

E-commerce software and hosting provider Miva Merchant has released a major core software update that includes several new features and modules.

Current customers will notice the following new options as part of the immediate availability of Miva Merchant 5.5 PR8 Update 6:

• Template Import/Export: Imports your store’s category tree and title images quickly and easily.

• Generated Inventory Variants: Automatically adds default prices, weights and costs when generating category variants.

• PayPal Payments Advanced/Payflow Gateway Module: Provides integration with PayPal Payments, Payflow Link and Payflow Pro.

• Checkout by Amazon Updates: Inventory variant options and more.

“With this latest update to our core software, our customers can take advantage of expanded payment gateway and checkout options,” says Rick Wilson, president and COO of Miva Merchant. “We are happy to have the opportunity to help store owners simplify and improve the ways in which they do business and to help them provide a better online shopping experience for their own customers as a result.”

More information about the Miva Merchant 5.5 PR8 Update 6 can be found here. Miva Merchant offers a complete e-commerce solution consisting of PA-DSS validated shopping cart software, PCI compliant ecommerce hosting, credit card processing services and custom website design & development used by more than 50,000 merchants.

Inspire Consumer Confidence Through Classifieds

Michael Garrity — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:00:00 GMT

The makers of the first classifieds Web application built for social media want to make the process a little easier with its new social classifieds engine optimization (SCEO) software.

Noah’s Classifieds gives users the ability to include LinkedIn profiles right in a posted ad that has been incorporated into the solution. Noah’s has also added Skype call functionality directly in ads.

The company also strengthened its existing PayPal partnership to provide users with assurance and confidence in their purchasing decisions. Now, posters can include PayPal stores in their ads that allow users to directly link their products and services to PayPal from within a listing.

Watch Out Square: PayPal Here is Here

Allison Howen — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:00:00 GMT

PayPal has launched a competitor to Square called PayPal Here, which is a mobile payment solution that allows small businesses to accept almost any form of payment.

The service offers a free app and triangular thumb-sized card reader, which turns iPhones (and soon Android smartphones), into a mobile payment solution. It presents small businesses with more sales opportunities because merchants can accept payments by swiping cards in the card reader, scanning cards and checks with phone cameras or manually entering card information into the app. Additionally, merchants can use the app to send an invoice and setup payment terms.

PayPal also released a new version of its PayPal Mobile app for the iPhone, which is a consumer app that also complements PayPal Here. With the new update, consumers will be able to find nearby businesses that accept PayPal Here and then notify the merchant when they are ready to make a purchase. Then, merchants will easily be able to accept the purchase by using PayPal Here to reference the shopper’s name and picture.

“Helping small businesses grow and accept payments has been in PayPal’s DNA since its inception 14 years ago,” says PayPal’s vice president of mobile, David Marcus. “We’ve heard small businesses loud and clear. They don’t want to miss sales opportunities because they can’t accept the payment type that their customers want to use. They want quick access to their money, a reliable card reader, and one transparent, low fee to process these payments. I’m thrilled to launch PayPal Here because we’ve been able to bring all of these key features together into a product that’s so simple to use.”

PayPal Here merchants pay a flat rate of 2.7 percent for card swipes and PayPal payments. Additionally, all PayPal Here merchants receive a business debit card for quick access to cash, as well as one percent cash-back on eligible purchases. So, if the merchant uses the debit card for purchases, their transaction fees essentially come down to 1.7 percent.

PayPal Here also offers merchants PayPal’s fraud management capabilities and 24 hour live customer support, as well as the large following of more than 100 million customers from around the world that use PayPal already. Merchants that are interested in receiving a PayPal Here reader can sign up here (no pun intended).

Selling on Twitter with Chirpify

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Most Web workers will consider Twitter more of a social network than an e-commerce platform, but that’s exactly what Twitter might become as Chirpify launches this week.

Once known as Sell Simply, Chirpify enables merchants (or anyone processing an order really) to conduct direct, person-to-person payments and donations over Twitter through its retail sales platform.

While a relatively new concept to say the least, it’s definitely being hyped as a way to “turn Tweets into transactions.” To determine whether or not that will ultimately be the case on a larger scale you’ll need a crystal ball far more accurate than my own, but a peak into how the platform actually works provides a good look into what you might expect.

Chirpify essentially just integrates with PayPal, but what makes the platform interesting is its ease of use - making a purchase or donation requires the user to only reply to a Tweet with something akin to @username BUY or @username DONATE. No fees are charged to the user for purchasing/donating.

Likely what will give Chirpify a boost, at least initially, is that it offers integration with existing e-commerce storefronts, including Magento (perhaps a nod in exchange for using PayPal as a payment platform. Integrating with popular e-commerce storefronts – the only others listed being Shopify and SAP – is a smart move out of the gate particularly as many likely to use the service aren’t familiar with tasks such as back-end fulfillment, listing and transaction management.

To use Chirpify, merchants simply click the “list on Twitter” button when drafting an item listing for sale in their e-commerce dashboard. Inbound sales information appears as either an email or as part of the retailer’s back-end system, as well as via a DM on Twitter. There are three Chirpify pricing plans (Basic, Pro, and Enterprise).

Chirpify receives a flat 4 percent commission on basic accounts and a flat 4 percent commission for Pro accounts, which start at $49.00 per month. For those merchants interested in going the route of the enterprise-level, Chirpify won’t take any commission at all but expect a hefty monthly or annual fee in exchange.

“Brands, retailers, politicians, celebrities and individuals have spent the past six years using Twitter to build communities and brand affinity, so why not allow them to sell on Twitter directly?” says Chris Teso, founder of Chirpify. “Customers don’t have to leave Twitter to make a purchase or donation. Chirpify removes the frictions of traditional e-commerce check-out processes.”

A Bundle of eBay Announcements

Allison Howen — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:30:00 GMT

New announcements from eBay about ecommerce, Facebook and PayPal have been filtering through the news over the last couple of days, so let’s take a look at some of these new and interesting developments:

X.commerce

X.commerce is an open commerce ecosystem that focuses on providing developers and merchants with technology tools for the future of commerce.

“We expect technology to change commerce more in the next three years than in the past 15,” says John Donahoe, President and CEO, eBay Inc. “This creates a tremendous global opportunity for developers and merchants alike. With X.commerce we’ve created an open ecosystem that is the most complete set of commerce capabilities on the planet. Through X.commerce, developers will be the driving force behind the next wave of retail innovation.”

This platform brings together the technology and communities of eBay, PayPal, Magento and other partners — and provides features such as shopping carts, payment services, inventory management, marketplace integrations, tax management and more.

Benefits include:

Tools that provide developers with the ability to create new shopping solutions.
X.commerce Fabric, which allows developers to distribute their innovations to merchants currently using the Magento, eBay and PayPal merchant portfolio.
A new distribution channel, which allows for the newest technologies to be plugged in as needed.

Facebook Partnership

Facebook and eBay have teamed up and revealed a new e-commerce partnership.

The partnership will bring Facebook’s Open Graph to eBay’s Magento and GSI commerce platforms, allowing developers to build new social shopping experiences for retailers of all sizes.

The partnership is designed to create new e-commerce applications with social networking features. The integration of Facebook features into e-commerce products aims at making online shopping more personalized, by displaying people’s thoughts about products, shopping interests and enabling retailers to add social functionality to their apps and websites.

“Integrating Facebook Open Graph technology across eBay’s global commerce platforms represents a powerful way to bring people together across an inherently social activity – shopping,” says Katie Mitic, Director of Platform and Mobile Marketing at Facebook. “We’re just starting to see what’s possible with social commerce, and look forward to the new experiences developers create.”

PayPal Access

Launched by PayPal and X.commerce, PayPal Access is a new commerce identity system that makes customers’ online shopping experiences better by providing an easier sign in option on participating websites.

Participating PayPal Access websites will allow consumers to sign up and sign in with their PayPal usernames and passwords — eliminating the problem of having to remember multiple passwords for multiple sites. The service aims at increasing conversion rates and consumer loyalty for merchants, especially since, according to Forrester Research, nearly one out of every four consumers abandon their shopping carts when they’re asked to register an account.

For consumers, PayPal Access will make shopping faster, safer and user-controlled. Additionally, for merchants, it provides access to active and verified consumers, allows for simple sign ups on a merchant’s site and is easily integrated into a site.

“Retailers need to innovate to keep pace with consumers’ evolving shopping and purchasing preferences and are looking for tools like PayPal Access,” says Larry Drebes, CEO of Janrain. “As a long-time partner of PayPal, we are pleased to be able to include PayPal Access in the Janrain Engage Social Login widget and API to help merchants and application developers offer an easy and trusted login experience to their customers.”

PayPal Seeing Extensive Growth

Michael Garrity — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT

PayPal, the world's most popular online payments platform, came out this weekend with new, impressive numbers about the amount of payments it processes daily.

According to the company, it saw about $3,650 in Total Payment Volume (TPV) every second during the second quarter of 2011. That totals approximately $315.3 million a day, with upwards of 5 million transactions taking place in a 24-hour span.

To say that PayPal has been doing well as of late is an understatement; in fact, this year also saw its first billion-dollar revenue quarter and the company's net TPV has increased by 34 percent from the same time last year.

PayPal has also seen vast increases in its mobile transactions, with roughly $10 million being processed daily on mobile devices. Mobile TPV is estimated to exceed $3 billion this year; it was just $750 million last year.

In 2010, PayPal's TPV accounted for almost 18 percent of all global e-commerce. One can only assume it's going to be even higher this year.

Is PayPal on the Ropes?

Mike Phillips — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:19:00 GMT

The hits are coming fast and furious to PayPal in what's adding up to be the most serious threats to the payment system giant to date.

Three of the most powerful banks in the U.S. – Bank of America N.A., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo – have come together to create clearXchange, a person-to-person mobile payment system. Customers can transfer money using a mobile phone number or email address. This is a direct shot at PayPal, which has been the only real game in town for person-to-person payments; most notably on eBay but used in many other ways. Convenience and security are the selling points for clearXchange, and a massive customer base will help, too. Chase alone has 26 million active checking accounts.

"Our customers want easy, safe and innovative ways to send and receive funds electronically," the Wells Fargo spokesman says. "The most natural way to do that is with your bank, where you keep your money."

Then Google jumped into the fray by partnering with MasterCard to release Google Wallet, a mobile payments system that allows consumers to use credit and debit cards to pay on the go. Soon, all credit and debit cards will be integrated into the system. Whenever Google launches a competing product, the target is wise to worry.

But PayPal will not go down without a fight. They are suing, claiming Google stole trade secrets and employees, as well as reneged on a signed deal to use PayPal to process payments in the Android app store. Some of those former employees are also named in the lawsuit for providing Google with trade secrets.

PayPal Adds Heat to the Mobile Payments Fire

Linc Wonham — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:00:00 GMT

PayPal parent company eBay is on a bit of a tear in the acquisitions department, and the latest move adds heat to an already sizzling mobile payments industry.

PayPal has acquired Boston-based mobile payments startup FigCard for an undisclosed amount, merely a week after eBay purchased WHERE to bolster its positions in local, social and mobile commerce.

In the announcement on PayPal’s blog, senior director of mobile Peter Chu described FigCard as having “developed an extremely easy way for merchants to accept mobile payments in stores by using a simple and very low cost USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. All the consumer needs is the Fig app on his or her smart phone. We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal – in the future, transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy.”

The mobile payments space is hotter than ever as major corporations such as PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Google, Apple and others compete to find the best solutions for turning our smartphones into wallets, and startup software and technology companies such as FigCard and Payfone are either being acquired or receiving funding as in the case of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square with Visa.

Add location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla into the mix, and daily deals leaders such as Groupon and LivingSocial -- and now also Facebook and Google -- and mobile commerce is about as exciting and explosive as any other category on the Web.

PayPal Processing +$6 Million Per Day - In Mobile Transactions

Mike Phillips — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:30:00 GMT

According to PayPal Mobile Director of Product Management, Fabio Sisinni, "We are doing more than $6 million per day in mobile transactions and we’re on track to exceed $2 billion this year.

"We will top $7.5 billion in 2013 based on the growth we’re seeing. A mobile wallet in the cloud is not so distant based on our numbers."

That's serious growth. In fact, PayPal's own figures show it to be an increase of more than 250% from 2010. And, based on the current rate of growth, PayPal estimates that number to reach $7.5 billion in 2013.

So where are all these mobile payments taking place? Merchants using Express Checkout include Starbucks, Footlocker and Overstock.com, and of course eBay is using PayPal mobile. Massive growth potential is also seen in the physical retail world. For example, visit a store after receiving a coupon on a mobile device then redeem said coupon at the store -- technically, a mobile transaction.

Another driving factor in mobile payment growth might be the sudden increase in mobile search, as detailed in this Performics study.

PayPal Revs Up its Mobile Payments Service

Linc Wonham — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:54:00 GMT

Mobile technology company Usablenet has announced a new integration with PayPal’s mobile payments product, Mobile Express Checkout, to enhance payment offerings on mobile websites. Usablenet can now extend PayPal’s Mobile Express Checkout to mobile commerce websites and other supported solutions such as mobile applications, tablets, Facebook and other social media, as well as in-store kiosks.

Usablenet owns a technology platform that extends all website features, functionality and content to customers wherever they are. Its clients include Amtrak, American Airlines, Estée Lauder, FedEx, Hilton, JCPenney and JetBlue.

“Given our significantly shared client base with PayPal, we are thrilled to be able to extend PayPal to mobile and to our other solutions,” said Usablenet President Nick Taylor. “Imagine the power of extending PayPal not only to consumers on mobile phones, but also to those shopping at an in-store kiosk powered by Usablenet or on Facebook where we provide the shopping experience.”

With more than 90 million active users worldwide, PayPal’s total payment volume represents 16.5 percent of U.S. e-commerce and 15 percent of global e-commerce. Over the 2010 holiday shopping season, PayPal experienced a 300-percent increase in mobile payments volume and closed out 2010 with $750 million in mobile payments volume – 50 percent more than the $500 million parent company eBay projected earlier in the year.

“Usablenet empowers top e-commerce merchants throughout the world,” said Bill Zielke, PayPal’s Senior Director of Merchant Services. “By integrating PayPal’s Mobile Express Checkout with Usablenet’s offerings, businesses can enable consumers to speed through checkout securely using their mobile phones.”

Starbucks Gives Mobile Payments Industry a Jolt

Linc Wonham — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT

Starbucks, one of the most iconic corporations in the U.S., has rolled out a mobile payments program that will enable customers to make purchases with their smartphones. Never mind that the same near-field communications (NFC) technology has already been in use in other parts of the world for several years, this will have a significant impact on the emerging mobile payments industry in the U.S.

The program will be available at every Starbucks location across the nation, and customers can download the free Starbucks Card Mobile App for use on select BlackBerry, iPhone and iPod devices. Users then will be able to pay for their purchases by holding the app’s on-screen barcode in front of scanners placed in more than 7,500 U.S. stores.

The U.S. is much later to the mobile payments party than parts of Asia and Europe, where consumers routinely pay for things with their smartphones. But if any U.S. company can push something into the mainstream almost overnight, it’s most likely Starbucks.

The question, then, is not whether mobile payments will finally catch on in the U.S. Instead, now that they are about to catch on – and most likely fairly quickly – the question is, what does it mean for the rest of the industry?

For dozens of startup companies that have been establishing themselves in the mobile payments space the past few years, the outlook is a little murky. The one probably known to most is Square, but there are many others including Zong, Venmo, Bling Nation and FaceCash that would suffer the consequences if mobile payments took off without them.

Other, much (MUCH) larger companies such as PayPal have been working extremely hard on capturing the mobile payments market in the U.S. The new Starbucks app has a PayPal integration, but that’s not to say that will always be the case – with Starbucks or with the next giant U.S. corporation (Target or McDonald’s, for instance) to roll out a mobile payments program.

Then there are the credit card companies and the banks, which have also been hard at work trying to shape any developments in the U.S. mobile payments market to fit their own objectives. Visa announced two separate pilot mobile payments programs last fall, one in partnership with Bank of America and the other one with Bancorp. And back in August, MasterCard announced the purchase of European payment service provider DataCash to better position itself in the event that the U.S. market gained any traction in 2011.

It appears that the U.S. mobile payments market is now about to gain some serious traction after several years of running in place. So whoever considers themselves serious players in the space had better be ready to play.

Why the Smart Money is On PayPal

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Of all of the titans of the Web industry right now, few have put themselves in as enviable a position as PayPal.

Apple has skyrocketing stock values and two of the hottestselling products ever made. Google and Facebook have more website visitors than most countries have citizens — not to mention all of their personal data. And Amazon has set the bar so high in e-commerce that it controls much of the movement throughout the industry.

Read "Why the Smart Money is On PayPal" from the February edition of Website Magazine.

OutRight's Accounting App in PayPal Apps (Beta)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:10:00 GMT

Online accounting solution Outright.com will provide its services to PayPal customers through the new Outright accounting application available in the PayPal Apps beta.

Outright’s application on PayPal Apps will leverage multiple PayPal X APIs and automatically pull up to two years of PayPal transactions and categorize those transactions, helping business owners better control their cash and manage their business. SMB's on PayPal.com will be able to see their cash flow, who their biggest customers are and where they’re spending money. Outright also provides valuable tax service including sales tax tracking, estimated tax calculations and a pre-populated Schedule C, the IRS income tax form for sole proprietors.

“When we learned from a recent PayPal study that 23 percent of small businesses using PayPal are managing their financials with spreadsheets, more than any other accounting program, we knew Outright was the perfect fit for PayPal businesses,” said Kevin Reeth, Outright co-founder and CEO. “Using PayPal X, Outright is able to automate accounting for small businesses on PayPal, eliminating the need for spreadsheets.”