PayPal Taking One More Step Toward NFC
- PayPal launches 3.0 upgrade of its free Android mobile app and adds in further P2P NFC payment features. “Request Money” is the first NFC-based feature proposed by this player.
- For this new widget, PayPal has decided to retrieve payment information from a remote server (cloud) rather than store it on the mobile handsets.
- The user enters the amount he wishes to send and brings his phone closer to the recipient’s device; the later specifies his password to complete the transaction. As such, this solution may remind one of the feature called Bump launched in 2010 by PayPal. Nevertheless, Bump relies on sensors embedded in the mobile phone which actually have nothing to do with NFC.
- In addition to the required two NFC-compatible Smartphones, an active PayPal account is needed to receive the funds. Payments are not charged if transferred from the sender’s bank account or from his PayPal account (fees however apply to payment card-based transfers).
- PayPal is slowly heading towards NFC, which however appears as one technology among others in its integration strategy. It may nevertheless seem that PayPal has opted for a cloud and contactless-oriented strategy, just like its rivals Google or ISIS.
- In addition to its will to be part of the physical acceptance sector, PayPal also asserts its ambitions to grow in the mobile payment sector: it has even reassessed its former calculations and deems it should have processed 3.5 billion dollars in mobile payments by the end of this year (five times more than in 2010).