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PayPal Introduces Open API

Posted by timothy on from the freedom-to-pay dept.

m2pc writes "PayPal has just announced the availability of their Open API under the 'PayPal X Program.' This enables developers to integrate PayPal payment processing services without forcing users to redirect to PayPal's website to enter payment information. This new initiative is designed to allow the company to better compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, which offer similar services. I wonder how much they paid for their domain: x.com?"

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. API??? by click2005 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Another Price Increase

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  2. redirect is better by bolthole · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I personally LIKE the redirect. I LIKE only inputting my credit card/whatnot information to paypal.com directly, instead of some random site that I'm doing a one-time transaction with and will probably never see again.

    1. Re:redirect is better by webheaded · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, I'd have to agree. I generally shy away from websites that directly ask me for a username and password for another site. I don't care who you are, but after all the phishing emails and such we've seen over the years, you'd have to be pretty dense to not feel at least a little uncomfortable with something like this.

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  3. Bummer! by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As an end user, to me the value in going through a centralized payment service is the security of having only one reputable company (PayPal) handling my personal information, instead of having every vendor out there from whom I've ever bought anything potentially putting my CC# into their database. Forget disintermediation via this API, I'd rather go the other way and have assurance from the middleman that the vendor will never get anything they don't need for order fullfillment - that is, just my name and mailing address.

  4. This is a bad idea because... by phiz187 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is going to make users accustomed to entering their paypal credentials into all sorts of unique interfaces, on a variety of websites. It is going to condition users to be less guarded about their paypal credentials. As it stands now, you basically only enter your PayPal credentials into either the PayPal.com or Ebay.com domains. Users know that if anywhere else asks for their credentials, that it is a phishing site. I think this is going to be a minor disaster for PayPal. But hey, maybe they're cash-flush enough to eat the cost of all the new fraud claims that are going to result.

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  5. Poor choice of words... by raehl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He meant greedy business entity strongly financially motivated to avoid any uncontrolled release of your information.

    PayPal very diligently acts to protect their bottom line. You may not like their policies on withholding balances, but that same financial diligence also goes in to maintaining security to prevent the huge financial losses that would occur should the public no longer perceive paypal as secure.

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