The online payments service has not given up on near field communications despite statements from eBay.
Even though PayPal’s parent company, eBay, has brushed off NFC technology in the past, according to Adrian Christie, a spokesperson for the company, it has not entirely given up on it as a potential mobile payments option.
Christie is the head of PayPal’s PR and communications and says the eBay subsidiary is still considering it.
Earlier this year, when the results of the second quarter for the subsidiary payments company were being announced, John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay – and who had been acting CEO of PayPal at the time – had claimed that NFC technology would “never” come to maturity and that it would not be able to offer a true value to consumers.
At that time, the NFC technology experiments for mobile payments were scrapped by the company.
Shortly afterward, PayPal Here was launched. It is a cloud based in store mobile payments system that requires only a PIN to be entered by consumers in order to complete a transaction. This service was rolled out in more than a dozen different American retailers.
The PayPal Here API has had a full release, allowing point of sale terminals to receive complete integration with the cloud based mobile payments system. It allows customers who have the app to check in when they enter a participating store, and then use their smartphones to make their purchase, which would skip the need for using NFC technology at any point.
However, Christie has now stated that despite the fact that PayPal Here doesn’t require NFC technology, the company has still not abandoned contactless mobile payments altogether. He said that “We just see NFC as a modality, a token, a way to connect to a terminal, but there are other ways to connect a terminal and NFC is not the only way.” He also went on to state that “I know there is definitely some concern from consumers in terms of reliability of NFC and tapping, but we’re watching all those indicators, and in no way are we ruling it out.”
