Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
We went out to San Francisco last month to take in X.commerce, a conference put on by eBay Inc. for its developer community. These are the people who, among other things, make payment applications work for the sellers, merchants, and processors that work with eBay and its payment entity, PayPal Inc.
What caught our eye was something you might consider mundane in these days of mobile payments and EMV chip cards. In a pavilion dedicated to somewhat futuristic shopping, we chatted with a fellow who showed us a rather plain piece of plastic with a magnetic stripe. It bore no embossing and no name or account number. Indeed, the only printing on its face was a PayPal logo.
This is the new PayPal Card, a physical token that accesses PayPal accounts and links account holders to the brick-and-mortar point of sale. The POS is a destination that e-commerce maestro PayPal has been tending toward for the last couple of years, but this was the first time we had seen a physical representation of its ambitions. Plus, the fellow told us the card is coming early next year—not so futuristic.
So we asked a bunch of questions, and it turns out this seemingly unremarkable piece of plastic will have some interesting properties (you can read more about it in the Trends & Tactics section). Users will be able to access any funding source they’ve stored in their PayPal wallet—credit card, debit card, prepaid card, loyalty points, checking account. Should they decide after the transaction that they need to change that funding source, say from debit to credit, they can do so any time for up to 14 days.
More intriguing, the card comes with an app that will let users receive offers from stores that happen to be nearby. In one scenario, the app will let stores see a user’s shopping list and extend discounts or coupons that apply to items on that list. The user can then pay with the card or, with another new service called Empty Hands, enter only a phone number (mobile or landline) and a PIN into the POS terminal.
Now, all of this may sound familiar to those who have followed developments in near-field communication (NFC), which may well be the next big thing in payments and more and more features wallets tied to offers. We have no idea what PayPal’s NFC or mobile-wallet plans are, and we doubt anyone outside the company does. But kudos to them for launching a product that is familiar, can be used now, and goes well beyond the trite properties of the standard-issue mag-stripe card.
John Stewart, Editor
john@digitaltransactions.net
