There are currently over 80 million active PayPal users and starting today, they will be able to use their PayPal credentials to log in to sites that use Janrain Engage to power their logins and sign-ups. Among today’s launch partners are Mahalo, Interscope Records and Tal.ki.
PayPal already offered its users the ability to use their credentials as OpenIDs – also powered by Janrain (PayPal joined the OpenID Foundation Board last in January 2009). The reality, though, is that most mainstream users do not understand how these systems works and probably don’t know that PayPal is an OpenID provider in the first place. Having the PayPal icon right on the sign-up form makes it far more likely that users will choose their PayPal ID when logging in to a new site. On the other hand, though, the fact that PayPal handles financial information could make some users hesitant to use these credentials for third-party sites (even though PayPal does not give these sites any access to this information).
Janrain’s customers can enable PayPal support with just a few clicks. Today’s announcement was made at Innovate 2010, PayPal’s developer conference.
