( 4UMF NEWS ) Pay With PayPal At A Store Near You:
PayPal has made deals with 15 retailers including Toys R Us, J C Penney and Barnes & Noble that will allow consumers to pay for purchases with their cellphones while expanding the online payment company’s service into additional physical stores.
Earlier this year Home Depot began accepting PayPal in about 2,000 stores.
For retailers, the service may attract more shoppers, provide more information about consumers, and help reduce costs associated with credit card payments.
For PayPal, owned by eBay Inc, physical stores can provide growth beyond its online roots.
EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe and Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan told Wall Street earlier this year that PayPal planned to sign up about 20 big retailers in 2012.
“They said 20 large merchants would partner with us this year. This is only our first installment. There will be others,” Don Kingsborough, the PayPal executive overseeing the offline initiative, said from its headquarters in San Jose, California.
PayPal grew quickly by making it easy for people to make secure online payments. It grew to prominence on eBay’s online marketplace, leading eBay to acquire the business in 2002. It has since branched out to hundreds of other e-commerce websites and is working on expanding to mobile transactions as well as physical stores.
Other retailers announced on Thursday that have signed on for PayPal’s in-store service are Office Depot, American Eagle Outfitters, Abercrombie & Fitch, Rooms To Go, Jos. A. Bank, Aeropostale, Foot Locker , Nine West, Jamba Juice, Guitar Center, TigerDirect and Advance Auto Parts.
Jamba, American Eagle and Toys R Us were notable additions because they also use Google Wallet, a PayPal rival run by Google Inc.
Some of these retailers will go live with PayPal in-store payments next month, Kingsborough said, while not mentioning specific merchants.
