At the developer’s conference Innovate 2009, where PayPal officially launched their PayPal X platform, PayPal also reviewed more precisely their plans for the future.
Apparently, the success of Facebook Connect is inspirational and with “PayPal ID”, consumers will have the possibility to login generally across many e-commerce sites:
Contrary to Facebook Connect which is burdened by fake profiles, PayPal accounts are coupled to bank accounts which avoids this problem. As such, PayPal’s efforts are more suitable for the e-commerce sector.
PayPal is still working on the implementation:
The question is, if PayPal can reach the ambitious goal of being an ID provider for e-commerce customers across the web. In particular the question is whether PayPal should rather be working with existing identification projects such as OpenID, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel. Developer Jesse Stay writes:
And when he mentions things like “they are working with Government” it gets a little scary that a single company may control all this along with government.”
These thoughts show that any company that wants to take on an ambitious goal such as becoming the Consumer Identity Provider will need to plan with a lot of resistance.
Which other companies besides PayPal would be able to take on such a task?
Only two: Facebook, the largest social network in the world, who with Facebook Connect have already massively extended their influence. And Google, with its very well developing and similarly functional Friend Connect.
Related posts:
- PayPal X: PayPal Launches Platform For Third Party Apps
- Paypal X: The Universal Shopping Cart Inches Nearer
- The Shopping System of the Future – Starring: Google, Paypal and Amazon
Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
