PayPal as Service, versus Method

I put this in my Leap Frogs Category as it’s new to me (although it may not be to you).

image

Way back when, a few folks (including me) thought that the PayPal infrastructure could be elevated to be used as a payment method .. just like Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc. In fact, there was a significant evangelism effort going on at the time, providing the necessary HTML code to include the PayPal image, secure interaction with nascent web services and the like.

From the image above, you’ll see that PayPal has up-leveled their game to provide a complete payment service, not only for their own payment method, but as agent to the other services who are ready to collect funds across the web. I’d be curious (and will poke about) to see if this was primarily a defensive move (to ensure they’d be a payment method), or a well-conceived (and decently executed) new business for the company.

Either way, nicely done.

About Michael Coates
I am a pragmatic evangelist. The products, services and solutions I write about fulfill real-world expectations and use cases. I stay up-to-date on real products I use and review, and share my thoughts here. I apply the same lens when designing an architecture, product or when writing papers. I am always looking for ways that technology can create or enhance a business opportunity .. not just technology for technology's sake. My CV says: Seasoned technology executive, leveraging years of experience with enterprise and integration architectural patterns, executed with healthy doses of business acumen and pragmatism. That's me. My web site says: Technology innovations provide a myriad of opportunities for businesses. That said, having the "latest and greatest" for its own sake isn't always a recipe for success. Business successes gained through exploiting innovation relies on analysis of how the new features will enhance your business followed by effective implementation. Goals vary far and wide: streamlining operations, improving customer experience, extending brand, and many more. In all cases, you must identify and collect the metrics you can apply to measure your success. Analysis must be holistic and balanced: business and operational needs must be considered when capitalizing on a new technology asset or opportunity.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: