"The whole world is going digital, and the future of how we communicate, how we get information, and even how we transact, is in the hands of developers," said PayPal President Scott Thompson. "The network is the platform on which the potential of digital money will be fully realized."

The company also demonstrated a mobile payment toolkit to embed payments directly into mobile applications, starting with the iPhone. That is going to open up a tremendous amount of opportunities.

PayPal introduced some new enhancements for its Adaptive Payments API, such as:

- Currency conversion
- Pay Anyone (customers won’t need a PayPal account)
- Pre-approvals (developers can create reusable payments agreements)

Developers can build person-to-person (P2P) solutions or business-to-business (B2B) payment applications on mobile phones or social networking sites. They can take a cut or distribute funds from PayPal payments as they happen. They can also enable buyers to send money to several people in one payment. This would come in handy for buyers who purchase multiple items from different sellers.

PayPal also announced that it has added five new currencies and now supports payments in a total of 24 currencies including the U.S. Dollar, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar, Singapore Dollar, Taiwan New Dollar, New Zealand Dollar, Euro, Swiss Franc, Czech Koruna, Swedish Krona, Danish Krone, Norwegian Krone, Hungarian Forint, Mexican Peso, Philippine Peso, Malaysian Ringgit, Chinese RMB, Israeli New Shekel, Pounds Sterling, Brazilian Real, Polish Zloty, Thai Baht and Japanese Yen.

"The addition of these new currencies makes it even easier to use PayPal around the world," said Scott Thompson, PayPal’s president. "Consumers have more choice in how they pay, merchants can conduct business in more markets around the world, and developers can now create multi-currency applications built on PayPal X."

Next year, there will be new pricing for services payments. There will be a flat fee of 50 cents for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with a three-day settlement period, or a 0.75% fee for service transactions funded by a bank account or PayPal account balance, with instant settlement.

A mobile payment software development kit will be unveiled sometime in the first half of 2010, and the developer portal is now available at X.com.

What do you think about PayPal X? About the new pricing? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Consumers Can Now Get Billed Later for eBay Purchases

> eBay’s Donahoe Prepared To Spin Off PayPal

> The Dawn of Real Facebook eCommerce

- American Red Cross
- UNICEF, Greenpeace
- Nature Conservancy
- Feeding America
- Heifer International
- Autism Society of America
- International Federation for Animal Welfare
- Children’s Miracle Network
- United Way of King County

"As the holiday season approaches, we’re pleased to be able to provide Amazon customers a convenient way to support a range of nonprofit organizations," said Mark Stabingas, General Manager of Amazon Payments. "With Amazon Payments, nonprofit organizations now have a simple and cost efficient way to process online donations while leveraging the fraud detection and risk management controls that Amazon Payments provides as part of the service."

Amazon customers can make donations quickly and securely using the information from their Amazon accounts. From now until January 10, they can go to amazon.com/holidaygiving to learn more about the process.

"With a significant percentage of consumers making purchases online, it is a priority for Children’s Miracle Network to incorporate online giving into our fundraising efforts. Children’s Miracle Network has raised $3.8 billion for children’s hospitals over the past 26 years by making the donation process as simple and straight-forward as possible," said Brian Hazelgren, Chief Development Officer for Children’s Miracle Network. "Working with Amazon Payments allows us to build upon our successful ‘low-dollar, high-volume’ fundraising efforts in a time- and cost-efficient campaign."

Amazon offers nonprofits a selection of what it says are easy-to-integrate and reliable solutions that enable one-time and/or recurring donations. There are also options for selling goods specifically for fundraising.

"Google Checkout sellers of real estate rentals, timeshares, and day sight-seeing tours must have a valid public business URL," says Sammer Abdul of Google Checkout Operations. "The sellers may, however, choose to use either Checkout buttons or Checkout invoices to process transactions for the above allowable services based on their business requirements."

The Google Checkout merchant help center provides a list of product categories (as well as examples), which are still considered unacceptable. Some of these are obvious (illegal goods), and some not so obvious (Travel packages and offers).

The competition is heating up among payment services, with Facebook now widely considered a potential big-player, and possibly Apple too. By not offering real estate rentals, timeshares, etc. Google is missing out on a fair amount of business. This is likely the driving factor behind Google’s decision to allow these.

On a semi-related note, Google recently announced it has made it easier to link Google Checkout with Google Base accounts. There’s a new page in the "settings" tab called "Checkout," where you can add accounts to Checkout by entering a Checkout Merchant ID.

Now, some more interesting news has surfaced. Facebook has hired a new Director of Product Management for Facebook payments – Prashant Fuloria. Guess where he comes from. He spent six years at Google, where he was a Director of Product Management and worked on Google Checkout.

"Fuloria has his work cut out for him as he oversees the development, testing, and wider launch of Facebook payments services over the next several months," says Inside Facebook’s Justin Smith. "While Facebook only accepts credit card payments today, it is likely to expand its payments tests in the future, as the company seeks to monetize users across geographies and demographic profiles."

"Managing the integration of payments methods and systems into the Facebook experience is an increasingly important challenge for the company as it seeks to create a new, substantial direct-to-consumer revenue stream in a market that is known for its high operational costs, major fraud challenges, and international complexity," he adds.

As you may be aware, Facebook has already been offering virtual currency within its network. It is even expanded upon the number of currencies that it deals with. Facebook taking a payments platform outside of its own network and onto the entire web could be huge.

Think about how Facebook is already integrated into so many web properties, whether it be through Facebook Connect or Pages or just sharing capabilities. Everybody already has a Facebook profile (many, many people do anyway). They’re going to start out with some level of trust.

The concept has a lot of potential as a big moneymaker for Facebook, and as a convenient way for consumers to make online payments. You have to wonder if purchases made would have any effect on ads Facebook shows you. We might be heading for some very interesting developments in Facebook monetization.

- PayPal

– Credit or debit card payment to seller

– ProPay, or

– Payment upon pickup

That basically means no checks or money orders. They claim they’re doing this to provide users with a more "secure checkout experience". Ironically, I know some people that won’t even use eBay or PayPal because they don’t want to provide credit/debit card information for security purposes. Valleywag suggests an ulterior motive anyhow:

Now you must used one of the approved electronic methods, especially PayPal and certainly not Google Checkout or Checkout by Amazon. Makes business sense: Mail transactions are probably a sink on customer service resources, as payments don’t arrive or bounce when they do. And eBay earns no vigorish from check or money order transactions as it does with PayPal, marginally increasing per-transaction profit…

As Valleywag subtly points out, there are some exceptions to eBay’s payment policy rule. Items like automobiles, heavy machinery, real estate, and "mature audiences" items will be excluded from the new requirements.

Most sellers are probably fine with the new rules so they can receive faster payments. eBay suggests that buyers will be more confident in their purchases this way as well. In the long run, it’s going to piss some people off, but it’s also going to make some people feel better. You can’t please everyone, and the people that have a problem will have to get over it. That is unless, there is enough uproar to make eBay backtrack on its decision like with the whole PayPal-only in Australia thing.

Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet sales can be a confusing and expensive venture. If you have a small to medium sized business and only sell a small amount of products then having your own merchant account may not be the answer for you.

Middle Persons And Binding Contracts.

You might not know it, but, in the initial stage of setting up a merchant service, your direct contact is a middle person or a sales agent working for an ISO (Independent Sales Office). In most cases sales agents work on a full commission basis and their commissions are either a straight fee based on a lease amount they lock you in, or a percentage of sales that you generate or in some cases, both.

Even though equipment lease is a non-issue for e-commerce since transactions are processed in real-time by a gateway company, most merchants find themselves in a binding lease for a minimum of 3 to 5 years.

Expensive Fees And Minimum Commitment.

Once you are approved by the merchant bank (after a business and personal credit check), you are required to maintain a minimum amount of sales per month (or pay a minimum fee) and in most cases, limited to making a certain amount in monthly sales (limited to maximum amount of sales permitted by the merchant bank).

Some of the costs involved.

Setup fee – Anywhere between $40 – $200

Monthly fees – Anywhere between $25-$50 for statements and minimum fees.

Per transaction and charges fees – Usually between 2%-7 % in fees and .30-$1 per transaction.

Gateway fees – $10-$30 per month (most gateway companies are charging a per transaction basis now)

SSL certificate – Can be as much as $250

Shopping cart fee or software purchase – Monthly can range $20-$70 and software purchase can be as much as $1400.

In addition to the cost is the technical aspect of setting up your site to use a shopping cart and real-time processing. Not all gateways, merchant accounts and shopping carts play well together. You must make sure that each can work with each other.

Fast And Easy Way To Accept Payments Online.

Now, if you are a larger business or do a lot of sales each month perhaps your own merchant account is the answer for you. It can save you money in the long run. But if you are just starting out with an online business, then a third party payment service may be the answer for you.

Third party companies handle all the background details, pay the monthly fees, assume the risks of fraud and charge backs, and handle all the secure shopping your customers will expect when shopping online.

There usually isn’t a set up charge, gateway fees, SSL charges and shopping cart set up. Depending on the service you choose, they can give you simple HTML code to add to your site or allow you to use “buy buttons” or both. Fees range anywhere from 5.5% to 13.5%. Some companies charge a set up fee and a per transaction fee.

Then there is always Paypal. A useful service for new comers to the online payment arena but it has its drawbacks. With Paypal:

Your customer must set up an account with them They can FREEZE your account They can set limits on monthly transactions Online Payment Solutions:

Clickbank Paypal 2Checkout

I suggest you explore all your options and decide what is best for you financially and technically. A little research online can save you money and time in the long run.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Abe Cherian is the founder of Multiple Stream Media,
http://www.multiplestreammktg.com . If you wish to
discuss about credit realted issues, apply for a
credit card and more visit:
http://www.creditcardsplease.com