Tag: paypal mobile payments

Successful acquisition of Modest may improve PayPal’s presence in the mobile commerce market

PayPal has announced that it has acquired mobile commerce startup Modest. The Modest platform was designed to make mobile shopping much more convenient, introducing the concept of “contextual commerce,” which involves the use of contextual information in order to engage consumers more effectively. Modest has become a specialist in this aspect of the mobile space and has enabled merchants to sell products in an effective manner on a variety of platforms.

PayPal continues to establish dominance in the mobile payments field

PayPal has established a very strong presence in the mobile commerce market, having been an early pioneer of mobile payments. The company has been making several acquisitions in recent years in order to establish a greater foothold in this space. In 2013, PayPal acquired Braintree, which augmented the company’s position in the mobile commerce space and gave PayPal access to promising new technology that is being used to facilitate transactions.

Contextual commerce could become a powerful tool for PayPal

Regarding the acquisition, PayPal sees a great deal of promise in contextual commerce, believing that it represents a new frontier for the overall commerce space. This frontier is growing quickly and Modest is one of the few companies that have managed to establish a prominent foothold in this growing sector. The acquisition of Modest may allow PayPal to provide better services to merchants that are becoming more interested in engaging mobile consumers, but how PayPal and Modest will work together is not yet clear.

Modest will further augment PayPal’s ability to serve mobile-centric merchants and consumers

Modest allows its users to construct mobile applications or integrate an online store into their existing application. This allows them to sell products through editorial content on blogs or through advertisements and similar content, leveraging the power of “buy” buttons that have begun gaining popularity in the mobile media space. The Modest team will be working with Braintree in order to make mobile payments for PayPal more comprehensive. This represents the first acquisition that PayPal has made since it split from eBay.

The new chief at the company is promising that upcoming offerings will have a highly smartphone friendly focus.

Most of the headlines regarding PayPal at the moment have to do with its upcoming split from eBay, but now that the new chief exec is settling into place, promises are being made to broaden the online and mobile payments offerings for a greater range of services.

Consumers will be able to expect to more easily use their accounts both online as well as in store.

PayPal knows that it will be taking on a range of different competitive challenges when it breaks away from its parent company, eBay, later on in 2015, but it will be making a serious mobile payments push to help to ensure that it will be able to take on its rivals. There are some very large and important players that have already made it into that market space as well as some powerful giants that will soon be making their first entries into it. Among them are Alibaba, Facebook, and Amazon, all of which are already promoting their online payment systems.

Apple Pay and Google Wallet are already battling it out in the mobile payments space over smartphones.

Dan Schulman, veteran exec and upcoming PayPal CEO has said that the company will establish itself as a “full service” payment partner for merchants and consumers, alike, ensuring that its position will be a solid one. It will be able to handle credit card purchases, mobile transactions, and even rewards programs for customers.

PayPal has already built up a massive reputation and customer base around the world as an online payment method when making purchases on desktop computers. However, consumers are using their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, at an increasing rate in order to make purchases both online and while they are in brick and mortar stores. Nearly one in three transactions that are processed by PayPal are now occurring over mobile devices.

Schulman was quoted to say that “Those worlds are blurring,” when he was interviewed by The Associated Press on the subject of mobile payments plans for the company. He added that “When you go into a store environment, and you have your mobile phone with you, it should be a simple step to do a checkout from that device.”