PayPal’s X: A Platform to Pick Your Pocket

03
Nov

PayPal’s X: A Platform to Pick Your Pocket

author: editor category: ReadWriteWeb

After waiting for two months for PayPal to release its much-anticipated platform, the day has finally arrived for PayPal X. ReadWriteWeb first covered the company’s announcement in late July and today, at San Francisco’s Concourse Exhibition Center, developers and press people waited with bated breath to see what was earlier described as a “platform as ubiquitous as the electrical outlet.”

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Said eBay CEO John Donohoe, “We believe that consumer behavior will change in the next three years, more than in the last ten. Think about it this way: this year: the eBay iPhone app will do $500 million dollars in volume on a device that didn’t exist two years ago, on an application that didn’t exist one year ago.”

Said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s VP of Product Development, “We’ll do 70 billion in sales this year, but there’s $30 trillion dollars being spent globally. We need to tap into this… You are the X factor.”

Developers can access X.com’s SDKs, technical docs and API support tools to produce integrated checkout solutions. Examples of some pre-existing products using the new Adaptive Payments API include:

The Javastore’s new drag-and-drop installation and frictionless payment system;

Instant storefronts for Facebook via Payvment’s social network shopping cart system; and

Cut-and-paste shopping solutions embedded in mobile applications, including instant purchases via ShopSavvy’s barcode-enabled comparative shopping Android application.

So far, one of the key points of this morning’s proceedings has been mention of the “removal of pricing barriers.” As a direct shot at Amazon, the company plans to offer what it describes as an “enhanced pricing structure,” with a $0.50 flat fee per transaction. For more on today’s PayPal developer event, check back here for details.

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