Exclusive: We’ve received more details on how PayPal will be scaling its in-store payments technology at major retailers. As we reported last week, PayPal is currently testing the mobile payments and point-of-sale integrations at Home Depot on a friends and family basis, in five stores. Today, we’ve learned that PayPal is partnering with AJB Software, a company that provides point-of-sale software to large brick and mortar retailers, to integrate the online payments giant’s technology into their offerings.
AJB basically provides a communications gateway that connects a retailer’s point-of-sale system with financial institutions. Over 140 large-scale retailers including Kohl’s and BestBuy use AJB’s software to manage payments. In a nutshell, the partnership allows an easy way for big box retailers to offer consumers a way to pay via PayPal in their stores. → Read More
As we’ve reported in the past, PayPal announced an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer. That retailer is Home Depot, we’ve learned from PayPal.
PayPal said of the Home Depot announcement: We frequently run trials with our retail partners. In this case, PayPal and The Home Depot are engaged in a limited pilot program for new POS technologies. The pilot is currently being run in five stores and involves a small number of PayPal employees.
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When we last left Paypal, the company was busy destroying Christmas for a bunch of kids. This week they’re shredding violins into bits while taking money from unsuspecting sellers. When will we stop trusting these guys? When they kill a puppy?
Regretsy reader Erica sold an ostensibly rare violin to an eBay buyer who paid using Paypal. The buyer disputed the authenticity of the instrument and asked for his money back. Rather than handle it amicably with Erica, the buyer went to Paypal who advised them to supply proof that the item had been destroyed and they would refund the money. The buyer then shredded the violin into chowder and sent a handsome photo to Paypal and Erica. Paypal refunded the money. → Read More
As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer was probably forced into offering deeply discounted deals in order to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon. And it doesn’t help that Amazon is now offering discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app, another huge blow to physical retailers.
Brick and mortar retailers need to figure out a way to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants that doesn’t eat into margins. Deals and coupons simply aren’t enought. And as former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson has said, retail isn’t broken, stores are. So how are retail stores going to survive? While mobile may be the technology e-commerce companies are using to jab physical stores, it is also the technology that may save these stores. Personalization and data are the two key factors that could save retail stores; and the vehicle by which these technologies can be utilized is via the mobile phone.
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In case you are heading to the movie theatre this holiday season, you might want to pay for your ticket via Fandango. Using the Fandango mobile app, you can now purchase movie tickets using your PayPal account and, in some cases, get your movie ticket straight to your mobile phone, avoiding lines at the ticket counter.
While Fandango has offered PayPal as a payments option on the web, this is the first time the company is using the payments platform in its iPhone and Android apps. The company, which began rolling out mobile tickets in 2010, says that more than 20 percent of Fandango’s ticket sales come from mobile devices, seeing a 73 percent year over year increase in mobile ticket sales in 2011.
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We’ve been hearing that PayPal is going to be rolling out an in-store payments experience at a national retailer in the U.S. soon. It looks like the payments giant is testing another in-store payments experience in Sweden, using NFC technology, and partnering with two Swedish developers Accumulate and Point. You can find more information about the partnership here (in Swedish).
Waroncash originally reported the test, but we’ve spoken to PayPal to get more details on the integration. → Read More
It’s the holiday season, when a webmaster’s mind turns to thoughts of love and charity. Take Regretsy, for example. The site collected a bit of money and began buying and sending gifts to the kids in the Regretsy community whose parents were having financial problems. In this economy, that could be just about anybody and, the Internet being the Internet, there was an outpouring of affection and donations. It warms, as they say, the cockles of the heart.
Unfortunately, Regretsy used Paypal.
As of yesterday, Paypal shut down the account and put a hold on Regretsy founder April Winchell’s account. They also forced her to refund the money she collected, less the fees Paypal took out – twice.
UPDATE – Paypal responds below. Looks like Regretsy got its cash. → Read More
PayPal restored sexy social network Zivity’s account tonight after a weeklong battle over whether the website violates its policy. Zivity bills itself as “Hotness. In Person” where “76,102 people just like you rub elbows with models, photographers, and video artists.” But early Thanksgiving morning, PayPal decided it didn’t want to rub elbows with Zivity anymore after four years of doing business together. → Read More
Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day brought record mobile engagement for PayPal, with 511 percent and a 538 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2010, respectively.
It looks like Cyber Monday is also bringing record sales for the payments giant. The company is reporting that as of 11 a.m. PST, PayPal is already seeing a six-fold increase (514 percent) more mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday 2011 compared to the same time period on Cyber Monday 2010.
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As we heard earlier today, Thanksgiving proved to be a lucrative day for online retailers. IBM reported online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010, with mobile shopping on the rise. eBay and PayPal are seeing similar trends. PayPal Mobile just announced a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving 2010.
On Thanksgiving in the U.S., consumers shopped on mobile via PayPal most frequently between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. PST. Around the world, consumers shopped on mobile most frequently between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. PST. → Read More
PayPal relaunched a peer-to-peer payment Facebook app today that some news outlets are misinterpreting as a partnership between the two companies. I’ve confirmed with Facebook that it’s not. It’s just a standard application on the platform, and Facebook couldn’t really do anything to stop PayPal. But why hasn’t Facebook built its own way for friends to send money to each other using its virtual currency Credits? Because of significant fraud risks and its focus on making Credits work better for virtual goods purchases where it earns 30%. → Read More
Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.
PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping.
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PayPal updated its Android application today and has added one notable new feature: support for NFC payments. Using NFC, or near field communication, two PayPal users with NFC-enabled phones can send and receive money using the mobile app.
The feature, which was previously announced over the summer, also includes a “Request Money” widget that can be added directly to the Android homescreen. To use the widget, you simply tap it, enter an amount and then bump phones with your friend. On your friend’s device, they’ll see the request and can then enter their PayPal password to send you the money.
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We know PayPal has been investing in a comprehensive solution for in-store merchants to integrate the payments service into the point of sale payments experience. Today, on eBay’s earnings call, eBay CEO John Donahoe said that the launch of the new technology will take place in the fourth quarter. He said that the in-store PayPal technology will be tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer in two markets.
The exact details on how this will work is still unclear, but we do know that features of this new offering will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. → Read More
eBay, Inc. is set to debut its brand new developer business tomorrow, X.commerce and we have many of the details that the e-commerce giant will be announcing at its annual developer conference. As we’ve written in the past, eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI will be the pillars of the X.commerce platform, which will feature a “fabric” that stitches the platform together with other partners to create new experiences for retailers and their customers.
PayPal’s director of communications Anuj Nayar tells me that this is the first time eBay has created a business focused on developers as the customers. Previously developers were part of each business, with separate developer experiences for eBay’s marketplace, PayPal and other businesses. Now, developers will get access to all of these technologies in one place, and according to Nayar, will be able to create new shopping and e-commerce experiences based on these interconnected suite of tools.
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Exclusive-PayPal is going to be setting up a pop-up store in downtown Manhattan, New York to showcase some of the new tools and technologies the payments giant will debut in the next few months.
The space will be located at 174 Hudson, which is located in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. Over the next 3 and a half months, PayPal will be inviting merchants to come visit the space where they will have the opportunity to get real-time demos of the technologies in realistic point of sale scenarios. The store, which will launch on November 1, will also feature a QR code for people passing by to scan and see more details on the PayPal’s new technologies.
Wow. PayPal released some new public numbers recently that show the payments platform is processing a massive number of payments per day. PayPal says that it saw $3,650 in Total Payment Volume every second in Q2 2011. By our calculations, that means PayPal is processing around $315.3 million in payments per day. On average, the payments platform is seeing upwards of over 5 million transactions a day.
PayPal has unequivocally been the crown jewel in parent eBay’s family of businesses. This past quarter, PayPal delivered its first-ever billion dollar revenue quarter. Total net total payment volume (TPV) grew 34% compared to the same period of last year. And PayPal is actually closing in on eBay’s marketplaces segment in terms of revenue (which posted $1.6 billion in revenue in Q2). → Read More
At 500 Startups’ Smash Summit in New York today, Robert Scoble revealed that PayPal is launching something big with Facebook in two weeks, and that it would be a more expansive partnership than the existing PayPal-Facebook integrations. This announcement is coming at eBay and PayPal’s X.commerce Innovate conference in two weeks, we’ve confirmed with the payments giant, and Katie Burke Mitic, who leads Platform Marketing for Facebook will be making an announcement. We hear the announcement will be relate of PayPal parent company eBay Inc.’s new developer platform X.commerce.
Last year, PayPal announced its new micropayments product, which Facebook integrated. In early 2010, Facebook announced that you could use PayPal to purchase Credits. → Read More
PayPal is boosting its leadership in Asia today with the addition of Visa exec Rupert Keeley. Keeley is joining eBay-owned PayPal to run its payments business in the Asia Pacific market.
This is a win for PayPal because Keeley has significant experience in managing payments services in Asia and other international markets. Prior to joining PayPal, Keeley served as President for the International businesses of Visa, where he was responsible for all of Visa’s businesses outside the Americas. He also previously was the Group President of Asia Pacific regions of Visa, and head of strategy and corporate development at Visa. Prior to joining Visa in 1999, he worked for Standard Chartered PLC. → Read More
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