It’s been a month since PayPal released its global payment APIs and the company is already primed to make some new announcements at today’s Le Web Conference. ReadWriteWeb caught up with VP of Product Development Osama Bedier for an early look at the company’s latest announcements.
We’ve already seen some 3rd party apps at the Innovate Conference last month, what’s in store for Le Web?
We’re announcing a few new partnerships including one on Philips’ Net TV. As of Q1 users will see inline payment on their televisions. Others include Greendizer for seamless bill pay and invoicing, GetGiving for one touch charity donations and Training Course Booker for fast course purchasing.
The IPTV integration is an interesting one and Philips doesn’t seem like an obvious partner. What other types of partnerships do you have in store for us?
Honestly, we’re not only looking to partner with the big brands, PayPal also wants to enable innovation from the little guy. We know we’ll reach success when developers exceed our expectations. We’re looking to them to decide how it plays out. Without taking credit for other developers’ work, there are some great areas to innovate in voice authorization, real-time mobile applications, shipping, consumer apps and coupons.
What does the future of PayPal look like?
We’re launching an app store where consumers can check out new and convenient payment forms and merchants can purchase specific solutions.
How is this connected to Le Web’s theme of the real-time web?
We’re looking to provide real time payment options and support.
As a global leader you’ve got every opportunity to dictate industry pricing on apps and merchant services. What is the percentage you’re going to take off merchant purchases from the app store?”
We’re not sure of that yet. What we do know is that it’s going to be fair. We don’t want to take our cue from some of the other closed platforms. We’re offering visibility, easy integration of payment and smooth transactions. We’re not trying to be Apple, we want as much cross device, cross platform transactions as possible. We make our money off the transactions, not the applications.
If the future of PayPal is about seamless app integration, then doesn’t that mean that in a perfect world PayPal is virtually indistinguishable from the app?
Not exactly. We offer developers security authorization. Consumers want to know that their money is safe. There are lots of other providers, but developers choose us because our brand offers a sense of security. We’re leveraging the success of our payment brand and the developers are responding.
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