Oct 28, 2010 14:27 GMT  ·  By
PayPal Login announced, an OpenID clone authentication project with Gigya and Janrain
   PayPal Login announced, an OpenID clone authentication project with Gigya and Janrain

A common effort from PayPal, Janrain and Gigya has been initiated at a recent PayPal Identity Services session, focused on expanding PayPal's Identity Services to support third-party authentication with PayPal credentials.

This means that when a third-party website will implement PayPal's Identity Services, users registered on that website will be able to login with their PayPal username and password.

“Following identity standards set by OpenID, SAML, and OAUTH, PayPal is teaming up with Janrain to provide PayPal Identity Services,” said Russell Hall on eBay Developer Network's blog.

“The individual user gets the benefit of PayPal's strong validation, security and fraud system. And PayPal only delivers user information that is necessary for the third-party Website to have and use,” added Mr. Hall.

PayPal uses Janrain's Engage service, a powerful rich user management platform, allowing easy access on third-party websites using PayPal credentials.

The blog post also references Gigya, a well-known company in the bay area, famous for providing a common API interface for multiple other social network APIs.

Gigya's client list includes many Fortune 500 brands like ESPN, Reuters, ABC, CBS, Time, Turner Networks, Universal Home Entertainment, FIFA, NFL, Home Depot, Sprint and others.

The Gigya API wraps together the APIs of Twitter, Facebook Login, AOL, Yahoo, MySpaceID, LinkedIn, Windows Live, OpenID and Google Buzz, all available for integration on Android, iPhone, in Java, PHP and .NET.

No details on PayPal's collaboration with Gigya have been made public.

The good thing going for PayPal which the other services don't have? A rock-solid reputation and history in safely moving money behind carefully protected credentials on the web.

And if they protected the user's finances for such long time, an user and developer won't have many barriers in trusting and implementing a PayPal powered login system.

UPDATE (30-10-2010): After an information mix-up in the first rendition of this article, we've been contacted by a PR representative for Janrain, and learned that the two companies (Janrain and Gigya) are not working together on this. For now, Janrain is powering PayPal's identity service on its own.