In March DeGardener broke out the scoop about PayPal intentions to launch Mobile Checkout. Now it’s finally formal. Matt Weathers, Moile Group Product Manager in PayPal tells us that PayPal will be formally announcing the availability of PayPal Mobile Checkout at the PayPal Developers Conference in Boston today. This is good news for any provider as premium SMS is complicated, sloppy and somewhat overly expensive. Our own web to mobile service, HooQs, will now be able to offer content providers a new monetizing route. 

According to Weathers, the PayPal Mobile Checkout flow is a two page WAP buyer checkout which is managed by APIs. A buyer can pay by logging in with user name and password or phone and PIN.  There’s no need for credit card info or bank info as the APIs are simplified versions of the existing Express Checkout APIs.  PayPal expects to drive selling of a range of products via mobile phone (tickets, services, hardgoods, donations, transportation cards, etc).  

“PayPal put a lot emphasis on reaching buyers and on solving the discovery challenges and have partnered with a set of design partners for that purpose. The APIs were designed to maximize merchant and developer control over the buyer experience.  Checkout can be plugged into the process regardless of bearer - SMS marketing, search, WAP sites or client.   The merchant sends the product details via the API and then gets a WAP link that can be delivered or displayed in SMS or WAP.  It can also be triggered by J2ME client (on most modern phones), which can present an almost unique option for game and mobile application developers outside the operator deck.”  

PayPal is very well positioned to take leadership of WAP based billing in the United States. This ecosystem takes a lot of presence and committed partners, and a player like PayPal holds a great position for obvious reasons. In Europe, however, PayPal will face quite some competition from quick runner Bango.  [correction: Bango works with PayPal as a channel and therefore they do not compete but collaborate - Thank Matt and Ray for correcting] In any case, these recent development is very good news for all service providers who wish to monetize the mobile channel.

A demonstration of the mobile search is now on PayPal’s WAP home page (https://mobile.paypal.com/) under the link “Buy something”.  Weather stresses that PayPal is definitely not getting into the search business,  “The search demonstration is purely designed to show the potential for mobile commerce”.