PayPal’s new functionalities expand services beyond online payments

By: Gadjo Sevilla

November 7, 2011

 

PayPal By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

PayPal started out as the payment arm of online auction dynamo eBay and evolved into an ubiquitous  online payment solution. Now it is enabling functionality on apps like Where, RedLaser and Milo which enhance their core business.

“PayPal is clearly then a very popular leader in online payments for the last couple of years here in Canada particular. We’ve seen a tremendous surge in growth of PayPal usage,” says Darrell MacMullin, Managing Director of PayPal Canada.

“We’ve done transactions for more than four million active customers,” MacMullin says,  “Canadians are using PayPal once every second, online, they’re doing lots of cross border transactions as well as domestic transactions and we’re seeing more and more merchants add PayPal express check out as a very fast, safe way for Canadians to be able to transact online.”

RedLaser scans barcodes and QR codes and find pricing information and availability on the fly

MacMullin explains that beyond facilitating online payments, PayPal is looking to add convenience to their users. They recently acquired some companies whose products can help boost the service.

“eBay has acquired companies in the last six months like RedLaser, which is a barcode scanning and search utility, we also bought a company called Milo, which allows a consumer visiting a store to see the available inventory of that store from the other locations.”

PayPal Canada's Darrell MacMullin: "PayPal has strategically acquired services that work on multiple mobile platforms so that they can cater to the largest number of customers."

“For example, they’re in a store and they want a digital camera available at one of the other locations, they can see where it was available, choose to go pick it up or actually pay with PayPal right from the phone.”

RedLaser, is an app on most mobile platforms which uses smartphone cameras to scan product bar codes and QR codes. RedLaser gives users various options on pricing and where to purchase items.

When consumers scan a bar code with RedLaser, search results include local stores and e-retailers, such as Amazon.com Inc., in addition to eBay’s selections.

The other acquisition, Where, finds nearby businesses and allows the rating and feedback from users to crowd source information.

“Where is like a geo-location incentive based platform,” MacMullin says. “so allowing this whole notion of pre-commerce, so getting consumers to cut through the noise and determine where can I get the best offer or where can I get the best information by making my purchase decision and once the role of PayPal in play is part of that and then as part of that making the payment piece of that very simple to do and transact,” he adds.

 

 

 


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