A convenient method for PayPal users to make payments on websites that do not directly accept PayPal is soon to be released.
The new software tool, known as the PayPal Secure Card, detects when a user lands on an e-commerce checkout page and automatically guides the user in completing the payment form in a secure manner while also providing enhanced fraud protections.
Each time a PayPal user accesses an e-commerce sales checkout page that does not otherwise accept its payments, Secure Card, in collaboration with credit card issuer MasterCard, generates a special MasterCard number. According to Chris George, director of financial products for PayPal, “From a merchant’s perspective, this looks like any other MasterCard transaction.” And to the customer, it’s just another PayPal purchase.
Three million PayPal users have tested Secure Card over the past year. Beginning tomorrow, US customers will have access to the plug-in; a global rollout will follow.
Secure Card is able to track user activity by residing on the computer of the PayPal user. A few more clicks are then all that are needed to authorize a transaction after the software automatically fills in their saved financial information.
For security reasons, PayPal does not save any information on the local computer. Instead, it records Secure Card activity on central servers in the user’s account for security and record-keeping.
On Windows computers running Firefox or Internet Explorer, Secure Cards function. According to George, users of Apple’s Safari browser currently only have limited access to the service. An individual, single-instance Secure Card transaction number is generated when a PayPal customer wants to make a purchase on a website that doesn’t typically accept PayPal payments by clicking a downloaded PayPal button on their browsers.
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Secure Card is able to track user activity by residing on the computer of the PayPal user. A few more clicks are then all that are needed to authorize a transaction after the software automatically fills in their saved financial information.
For security reasons, PayPal does not save any information on the local computer. Instead, it records Secure Card activity on central servers in the user’s account for security and record-keeping.
On Windows computers running Firefox or Internet Explorer, Secure Cards function. According to George, users of Apple’s Safari browser currently only have limited access to the service.
Broadening PayPal’s appeal
Analysts predict that the new service will make PayPal more appealing on e-commerce websites. According to Red Gillen, an analyst with financial services research firm Celent, “This is really the way to complement those websites that don’t already take PayPal.”
The new service will help further accelerate this growth beyond the tens of thousands of merchants who already accept PayPal payments. PayPal usage is growing on the internet as a whole at a rate that is almost twice as fast as it is on eBay.
In the most recent quarter, PayPal reported 164 million global accounts overall and 37.5 million active accounts.
The newest eBay initiative to combat “phishing”—spam emails that attempt to trick recipients into visiting fake websites and disclosing sensitive financial information—is Secure Cards.
According to a study by the anti-virus company SophosLabs, 21% of phishing attempts claimed to be from PayPal or eBay. 85% of these fake messages from a year ago purported to be from these two major auction and payment websites
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