eBay owns payments giant PayPal, and PayPal is deeply integrated within eBay’s marketplace but both companies have operated fairly separately when it comes to APIs and developer relations. But interestingly, eBay and PayPal are announcing that its API teams are joining into one combined open platform business, made up of the assets of both eBay and PayPal platforms.
The idea, according to PayPal’s head of platform, Matthew Mengerink (who lead the new joint platform), is to offer developers one ecommerce solution that will offer a “complete approach” to online and offline business. And PayPal Innovate X, the payments company’s popular developer conference, will now also include eBay’s developer conference as well.
So why are eBay and PayPal joining forces on API and developer efforts? The company says that it makes sense to pool resources to create a platform that brings together online and offline commerce, shopping and payments, with mobile, social and local components. I guess there could be some interesting APIs that could combine a payments platform with eBay’s local initiatives, which include recently acquired Milo.
But it does make me wonder whether eBay is attaching itself to PayPal’s developer conference and platform because the payments company has a stronger developer community with a more widely-used API. This is purely speculative, but PayPal has been eBay’s crown jewel for some time now, and marketplace hasn’t really been growing all that much.
And PayPal’s developer community has been steadily growing, thanks to the launch of a number of innovative payments products and APIs released over the past year.
eBay could see a collaboration as a way to bring more developer attention to its own offerings, especially as the ecommerce giant looks to local commerce to bring new life into the marketplace.
And in terms of the conference, it should be interesting to see how the split is in terms of announcements and activities between the two companies. Innovate has always been a high point in the year for PayPal, when it releases its most innovative new products. Hopefully, eBay’s participation won’t take attention away from this.
PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. They offer products to both individuals and businesses alike, including online vendors, auction sites and corporate users. PayPal connects effortlessly to bank accounts and credit cards. PayPal Mobile is one of PayPal’s newest products. It allows you to send payments by text message or by using PayPal’s mobile browser. PayPal created the Gausebeck-Levchin test, which is an implementation...
Founded in 1995 in San Jose, CA, eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers globally in the world’s largest online marketplace, utilizing PayPal to ensure secure transactions. The company also operates specialized marketplaces such as StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, and eBay Classifieds sites, which together have a presence in more than 1,000 cities around the world. eBay items can be sold either via a silent auction, in which users input the maximum price they are willing to...
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