 |
|
| Dow | Nasdaq | About Us | Disclaimer |  |
RSS Feed |  |
Follow us on Twitter |
|
Featured Advisors |
Friday March 23, 2012
'PayPal Here' boosts eBay
by Geoffrey Seiler, editor BullMarket.com The PayPal unit of eBay (EBAY) introduced its "PayPal Here" service to allow small businesses to accept credit cards from their smartphones. The service comes with a triangular device that plugs into a smartphone to read credit cards. The device, which is called a dongle, will encrypt the credit card information before transactions are sent to the PayPal app on the mobile device. PayPal will charge a fee of 2.7% of the purchase price on credit and debits cards, which is slightly less than the 2.75% charged by a similar service offered by Square. The PayPal Here service was launched in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong and thus far the service has been a hit, with PayPal spokesman Anuj Nayar noting that in the first 24 hours the firm received 1,000 sign-ups per hour. PayPal Here isn't a new concept, as start-up Square, business software giant Intuit, and electronic payment systems maker Veriphone all have competing devices. What PayPal has going for it that these other firms don't, however, is over 106 million active global account users. It's that huge and growing account base that makes the potential of PayPal's offline and mobile wallet efforts so attractive. The slightly cheaper fee, meanwhile, could sway some merchants using Square to move to PayPal Here, although it's a rapidly growing market and there is likely room for more than one player. Additionally, while PayPal will not have the first mover advantage in the U.S., it will have a leg up in international markets. We continue to think that the market is underestimating the potential of PayPal, and continue to rate eBay a "Buy" with a $44 target. Learn more about this financial newsletter at Geoffrey Seiler's BullMarket.com. Related articles: 
|
News Flash
|
|