elgato
Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 17240
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:28 pm Post subject: Paypal branching out into the offline world |
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Imagine walking into a brick & mortar Best Buy store and purchasing a new video game with your Paypal account. That's exactly what Paypal is envisioning as they expand offline.
By the end of 2011, Paypal is rolling out in store payment services at a major, unnamed U.S. retailer. Announced by CEO of eBay John Donahoe, this move allows the consumer to pay for products with Paypal while physically in a store. By 2012, Donahoe expects the service to be available in over 20 major retailers across North America. Paypal expects much slower growth with this technology than online sales, but growth will be driven by increased smartphone usage and payment applications come with that growth.
The technology being developed for retailers is different from the near-field communication technology seen in Apple and Android smartphones. Used for peer-to-peer payments, the NFC technology creates a transaction by tapping two phones together. Merchants have been unhappy with the compatibility of NFC with their existing payment systems, so much so that one retailer sarcastically nicknamed it “Not-For-Commerce”. eBay officials are also considering partnering with daily-deal companies like Groupon and LivingSocial to bring Paypal as a payment option to smaller retailers.
Person-to-person transfers don’t offer much revenue to Paypal, thus the expansion into the offline retailer space is vital for continued growth. Paypal only gains revenue from the transaction when a credit card is used. Users that send money from an existing balance or banks are not charged a transaction fee. Paypal expects to perform $3 billion in mobile transactions this year and already had a stellar second quarter with net revenue just over $1 billion.
more.. link to news article |
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