WebProNews

PayPal has opened its global payments platform called PayPal X, providing new APIs, a new developer portal, and some introductory services pricing to help developers take advantage of PayPal X to build businesses.

"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.

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