14 DAY TRIAL // eBay is further focusing on merchants and ecommerce and moving further away from its auctions site beginnings. As part of a broader X.commerce initiative, eBay is debuting PayPal Access, a very interesting new tool for providing authorization and authentication to commerce sites in particular.
PayPal Access, essentially, aims to be the Facebook Connect or the Google Account of the ecommerce world. And that's a very good idea, one that has plenty of chances of catching on.
With PayPal Access, users are no longer required to sign up for any small shop they encounter online, they can simply use their PayPal account for authorization.
Same as using your Facebook account saves you the trouble of remembering all manner of passwords for sites you visit rarely, PayPal Access will make it easier to use small shops without having to register for each one.
What's more, it also means that you can pay for anything on the site with your PayPal credit without having to go through too many hoops.
For the merchants, it means that they have accurate user data and also a bigger chance of selling something by streamlining the payments process.
"With PayPal Access, you can provide an enhanced user experience to the visitors on your site. By registering users with a click of a button. PayPal Access transfers the data, if a user agrees, and the merchant site can use that data for account registration," eBay explains on its X.commerce website, at the rather slick x.com domain.
"It helps eliminate the friction associated with the registration process and forgotten passwords. PayPal Access goes much beyond just authentication and provides verified information on the user so you can control fraud and know that you are dealing with real users with real addresses," it continued.
PayPal Access works online but it also works with mobile apps. Overall, it looks like a solid product. But that's far from a guarantee that it will catch on. If it does, it will be a great boon for PayPal which is increasingly eBay's cash cow.