14 DAY TRIAL // The online payments market is booming and, while there are some established players, it's too volatile for any of them to relax. PayPal is a household name on the web yet increased competition from all manner of virtual currency systems and even from traditional monetary services like credit-card company MasterCard means that PayPal has to stay on its toes to continue to grow. So it is introducing an interesting new way of paying through the service, plain old credit cards.
Developers using PayPal's recently launched payments platform, X, can now set up credit card payments using their PayPal accounts. In a way, it goes completely against what the service was created for in the first place, to simplify online transactions, but it actually makes sense in a number of cases and the added flexibility should be appreciated by users and developers alike.
"Our developers asked for an easy way to accept credit cards using our Adaptive Payments API and that’s why I’m excited to unveil Guest Payments today. Guest Payments allows developers to collect credit card payments without requiring their customers to open a PayPal account, eliminating the complications merchants, developers and startups face in accepting credit cards," PayPal announced on its official blog.
PayPal was set up to enable small companies and websites to add a secure and trusted payment system to their business. Setting up a direct credit-card payment system is still too much of a hassle for small-time entrepreneurs. At the same time, users had a universal way of paying for products and services online which was dead-simple to use.
However, PayPal requires an account and plenty of users are unwilling or unable to go through the process of creating one. For websites that only offer PayPal it meant lost potential clients. The new system is the best of both worlds, it allows users to pay with their credit cards and developers to continue to rely on PayPal.