PayPal outlines seamless shopping vision for offline payments

Already hugely successful online and renowned primarily for its ties with eBay, payment processor PayPal now has plans to develop its business in the offline world.

In recent times it has talked about wanting to help brick-and-mortar retailers engage with consumers through the entire purchase process — from customer acquisition, to in-store engagement, payments, and post-purchase retention.

In addition to a whole host of merchandising ideas – including the facility to create a shopping list online which can then be shared with the retailer upon in-store check-in to match what the consumer wants with product availability– PayPal has also suggested three different ways that a consumer might use PayPal for purchases in-store:

- The first is a ‘PayPal Card’, which is an unembossed, PIN-enabled card with the PayPal logo on the front and a magnetic stripe on the back. There is no visible customer name, card number, expiration date, or CVN on the outside of the card. The basic motion for the buyer would be to swipe the card, enter their PIN, and approve of the purchase amount, with funding being drawn from the customer’s default PayPal payment method.

- The second is ‘Empty Hands’, which replaces the swipe of the PayPal Card with the terminal entry of a phone number and PIN. PayPal believes this is what a buyer would use when they don’t have a PayPal Card with them at the time of purchase. The basic motion would be to select PayPal as the payment option, enter their registered phone number, enter their PIN, and approve the purchase amount. Like the PayPal Card option, funding would be drawn from the buyer’s PayPal account.

- The third option is called an ‘In-Aisle Purchase’. With this, the PayPal Mobile app is the exclusive interface for the purchase made in-store — and because PayPal fully controls the point of interaction on the mobile devices, it can provide a richer set of features. Instead of just accepting the default payment methods, the consumer might pre-select their preferred funding source for the purchase — and would be able to see and control how various offers and gift card balances might be applied to reduce the total cost.