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Google plans pay service to rival PayPal
NEW YORK, June 17 (Reuters) - Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten competition with eBay Inc.'s PayPal unit, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
From here.
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Hmmm........
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maybe it WILL give some competition, either on fees or more favorable terms for sellers .....and google's name behind it will give them some instant credibility.
just being optimistic I guess, but I'm not holding my breath.
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I would consider this to be a serious threat to PayPal. Google does not back off easily and have enough cash to throw at projects. It also have traffic and can easily convince switchiovers by offering lower fees than PayPal.
Will be interesting to see if Google can do a better job than PayPal combating fraud since it is in the database arena and probably have better technological tools than PayPal. Downside will be the PayPal cheerleaders showing up again on these chat boards. Notice how scarce they become since the eBay takeover.
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I think there is more potential revenue in a credit card operation than in an auction service, and that includes the long term prospects for eBay.
First the payment service, then the issuance of credit cards.
The big money is in the interest rates which are legalized usery, and the "late" and "over limit" fees which are sheer extortion IMHO.
The internet is just another route to these incredible riches for those with deep enough pockets to get in the game.
Larry
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If it's halfway successful, I'm afraid it'll just be another hassle. I doubt I could completely drop PPal, so then there'd be two major sets of records to track, with differing processes making it yet that many more steps to hand-hold newbie, or confused, buyers to work their way through.
If they somehow had a very small minimum fee for the smaller transactions (as opposed to that 35c+ that "The Pal" hammers small amounts with, and IF they could avoid a higher percent of the phishing scams and be more responsive to users than is PayPal, well, I'd be more than happy, I'd be delighted, to see PayPal relegated to an also-ran. But with its position as eBay's smarmy pard "preferred to be used here" blah blah... it'll be a long road to have that sort of success unless Google opens an auction/ad service and along with Yahoo knocks the gorilla down to organ-grinder monkey status.
Destroying PayPal would be wonderful, but frankly I bet I'll go on telling buyers I prefer mailed checks and MO's, but having to cope with TWO online payment services instead of the present ONE. Sigh.
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will we get google Daman to answer our questions on the boards ?
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I think this is wonderful news. I'm very much looking forward to google opening up their auction site as well (they are planning on launching one in 2 to 3 years according to an interview from last year).
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Competition, if successful, can only help to keep fees low.
My guess is that, unless it has employees familiar with banking systems in other countries, Google will start out only allowing US residents to become members - similar to what PayPal, Yahoo and Amazon did. In fact, PayPal has only started to offer its services in Europe within the last year.
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I am hoping that Google hammers eBay. Maybe then eBay will start to focus more on keeping sellers happy instead of these crappy changes they are doing to the site.