eBay owned PayPal has been making some interesting acquisitions over the past few months that clearly show the direction of the company in capturing payments flow from digital goods, and physical products at a local level. The company bought local payments and advertising company Where for over $100 million in April, snapped up mobile payments company Fig Card and most recently shelled out $240 million for mobile payments company Zong. The payments giant is clearly serious about mobile and local payments and is buying its way into commanding the space. In terms of future strategy, PayPal believes that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S., from local businesses to large chains.
Of course, this ambitious goal is easier said than done. Considering that PayPal is a digital product and doesn’t have built in reach to local businesses with point of sale systems, scaling to the local level is going to take a significant amount of work. We were able to chat with Sam Shrauger, VP of global product and strategy for PayPal about the company’s future strategy to dominate the ‘digital wallet.’
Shrauger tells us that PayPal’s plan is less about making the wallet digital and more about letting people take advantage of technology to use money better. As for making this a reality, Shrauger says that letting people use PayPal in the physical world is critical for the payments technology.
He explains that innovating in the payments space in the physical world is about giving customers mor options to pay, as opposed to offering a single technology. PayPal wants to add more ways your money can work for you, beyond just the payment itself. As for what that means, Shrauger declined the reveal the company’s plans but did say that PayPal would be launching new products later this year dealing with this issue.
There are two advantates PayPal has in its favor. First, the company now has over 100 million active users, which is impressive. And second, the company’s userbase is increasingly using mobile devices to pay for products. PayPal recently announced that it was upping the estimates of the amount of mobile payments transactions using the technology this year; doubling the estimate to $3 billion in mobile total payments volume (TPV) in 2011.
Payments in the physical world is going to be a big step for PayPal and I’m very curious how the company is planning to use its technology in this expansion. For Google, NFC and mobile phones are part of the gateway for payments in local, with the launch of Google Wallet. For Square, small businesses popularity and ease of use have been helping the mobile payments startup grow like crazy.
It’s not the first time I’ve pointed out that PayPal has an ambitious plan on its hands by becoming the digital wallet. And it should be interesting to see what killer technology the company has up its sleeve later this year.
Check out this video below in which PayPal President Scott Thompson challenges his employees to use only digital currency to pay for all of their purchases.
I’m not a fan of paper: I avoid it at all costs, and tell anyone who listens how much I hate it. While paper is still a necessity in some areas of life, I’ve gone to great lengths to figure out how to do away with it where possible. Thanks to the Internet and electronic tools, this isn’t so hard.
Tablets
The first and most important breakthrough in technology that makes me hope for a future without paper is the tablet. There are very few tasks that you require paper for that a tablet cannot replicate. Often when doing tasks like collecting an inventory of computer hardware at work, I would have used a clipboard and stack of paper in the past. Now I can walk around and check off each item as I find it.
A tablet can replace paper not only for writing, but also for reading. Whether you have a multi-purpose tablet like the iPad or a single-purpose tablet like the Kindle, newspapers, books, reports (which would have wasted hundreds or thousands of sheets of paper) can now be shared electronically.
PDFs
PDFs are actually a fantastic format for reducing the amount of paper in your home or office. Since PDFs can be produced as editable documents, they can replace paper forms that need to be filled out, or just replace documents as read-only files.
If you’re planning to make the PDF format the centrepiece of your effort to go paperless, it’s important that you have a program that’ll let you create and edit PDFs. Many of them don’t come cheap, unfortunately.
Adobe’s Acrobat is probably one of the best apps available, but like many of Adobe’s products, it will cost you a pretty penny. There are free options like CutePDF for Windows, and cheaper apps like PDF Editor for the Mac, but I would suggest investing in a something better equipped like Acrobat or PDF Pen.
For you security minded folk, a PDF can be encrypted and locked, making it much harder for your sensitive information to be opened and read by the wrong hands — even if they get the file.
If you plan to go as paperless as possible, scan a copy of your signature into your computer and save it (another file that would be good to encrypt). This way when you get an email requesting that you print off the sheet, sign it, scan it in, and email it back, you can simply just open your favourite PDF editor, and paste in your signature.
Billing
Invoicing has long been a business wrought with paper, but thanks to services like Paymo and Freshbooks you can do all of your invoicing online. If you still have to invoice clients who refuse to go paperless, Freshbooks will print off and mail the invoices as well — for a price.
Backup
With a paperless lifestyle, it’s important to be careful about backing up your information and implementing a redundancy scheme.
Without regular backups, your data is at a higher risk of being lost forever than it was in paper form, but with off-site backups it’s much safer than paper ever was; even if a fire comes through your house you’ll be able to access your files.
Make sure to follow the 3-2-1 rule for your backups. You need three copies of every file made, on two different types of media, and at least one of them offsite.
It is still not possible to go completely paperless, but we are getting closer to making that a reality. Getting a head start on it now will save you time and money as you will already be ahead of the game when the paradigm shifts once and for all.
And don’t forget, you’ll be saving trees!
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