PayPal goes in store and on the road

PayPal has partnered with four point-of-sales (POS) device manufacturers to allow retailers to accept electronic payments in physical stores.

The e-commerce company today launched the PayPal Here set of APIs, designed to allow POS manufacturers to integrate PayPal into their machines.

Four POS manufacturers, including MICROS, Kounta and Vend, have signed up.

Retail chains including the Glue fashion stores, Guzman Y Gomez, Crayons and Sonoma Bakery will begin accepting PayPal payments shortly.

Customers using PayPal in-store sign in to the app when they go to the shop. When it’s time to pay, their image is displayed on the POS terminal, and the amount due is charged to their account.

PayPal said customers pay nothing to use the service, however merchants are charged a fee which is “in line with, or slightly higher than the merchant fees charged by credit card companies.”

In the taxi industry, the company has begun working with taxi firm Go Catch, allowing passengers to side-step the ten percent impost charged by Cabcharge when a customer pays a fare using a credit card.

“You open the PayPal app, it shows where the cab is,” said the spokesperson. “You book the cab, take your ride, and the fare is automatically billed to your PayPal account.”

In recent years, major banks such as the Commonwealth Bank and ANZ have flagged competition from the likes of PayPal, Apple and Google as a key challenge.

Gartner's banking and investment services research director David Schehr said "digital megafirms" were unlikely to become the banks of the future, but could bring about a new breed of niche, disruptive players in the industry.

"PayPal will be a significant player in the payment space [but] it's still not as large as the credit card providers," he told iTnews at the Gartner Symposium this week.

"It does get a lot of use, but the volume of transactions is single digits, compared to the volumes going through the traditional card providers.

"Will it grow larger? Yes. Will it become 50 or 60 percent? No."

"The current system works fine," Schehr said. "Most consumers don't want to find 10 new ways to do the things they already do; they want to find easier ways to do the things they currently do."

Liz Tay contributed to this article.