Ebay is due to unveil PayPal Access today which will enable users to use their PayPal accounts on other websites without the need to register an account or add credit card.
The announcement, due at the X.Commerce conference in San Francisco will both remove an extra step and some of the friction from purchasing online and reduce the risk that a hacked ecommerce website could steal financial data.
The downside of PayPal Access for merchant will be the extra expense of integrating a new login system alongside their own, or instead of it – which would mean that PayPal, and not they, will have control of that valuable user data. In a way this is a similar land-grab to that of Apple over subscription fees – PayPal Access will make the service easier for consumers, but the biggest winner will be PayPal and not the merchants.
Paypal has brought Gigya and Janrain in as partners on the implementation of PayPal Access – with Gigya offering the PayPal Access API to its ~500 enterprise clients through its Social Login product, and janrain will offer the API through its social check-in platform.