Tag Archives: pypl

How Google Hands Free App Could Disrupt In-Store Payments

If Google and its Hands Free payments app can achieve a critical mass of brick-and-mortar stores, other digital wallet companies and payments processors could find themselves facing tougher competition — at least, based on my test of the app. Hands Free is designed to eliminate the need to pull out a smartphone and tap it on a point-of-sale system when paying with Android Pay. It uses a combination of your initials, phone and picture to complete each transaction. And it works. Well. Google, which is a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ), rolled out Hands Free in March to at least 15 businesses with locations around the South San Francisco Bay Area. Since IBD’s Silicon Valley bureau is located near several, I decided to test the idea of ordering and paying for something with only my voice — part of the future we’ve been promised. After taking a selfie — a photo is required to use the Hands Free app — on my Nexus 5X phone, I headed to a nearby McDonald’s ( MCD ), one of the chains participating in the pilot program. A colleague in the newsroom wanted a Diet Coke, and I was happy to oblige. Phone in my pocket, I walked up to the cash register, placed my order for a medium Diet Coke and then uttered the phrase “Can I pay with Google?” The cashier skipped a beat and replied, “Of course you can! Initials?” I replied with mine. “M.C. Hammer!” she said, and pressed a few more buttons on the register. “Wearing a hat today, I see,” she said, studying my hatless selfie on the register. And then she handed the beverage over with a receipt (I got an emailed receipt as well). Neither my phone nor wallet ever left my pockets. My order was small and the test limited, but it’s clear that the implications could be far-reaching if consumers take to the idea. If Hands Free were available widely, I would certainly use it — paying with just your voice is incredibly easy (and cool, too). At its core, Hands Free takes a swing at a big issue in payments (and e-commerce in general): how to make checkout as frictionless as possible. PayPal ( PYPL ) and its most recent endeavor on that front, One Touch , also attacks the friction problem. Apple ( AAPL ) Pay and rival Android Pay are also trying to innovate around the friction Silicon Valley perceives in paying with cash, a credit card or a mobile phone. With Google running a relatively small pilot program, it’s hard to say at this early stage what impact Hands Free will have on its digital wallet. I doubt that being able to pay with Hands Free would alter where I go to buy things, but it just might be enough to convince me to pick Android Pay over its competitors.

Square Challenges PayPal In Web Checkout

Square ( SQ ) is intensifying its offense against PayPal ( PYPL )’s Web checkout products. With details in a blog post early Wednesday , Square says that it has created a new tool that can process payments from any website after the seller adds several of lines of code. Called E-commerce API (application programming interface), it marks the first time that Square has offered sellers the ability to put a Square checkout page on any website. Square’s announcement mounts pressure on PayPal, which already is facing stiff competition from tech titans such as Apple ( AAPL ) Pay and Google’s Android Pay, among other offerings. Google is a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ). Prior to Wednesday, Square offered its merchants two Web checkout options using its own prebuilt store and two third-party options for using websites prebuilt by BigCommerce and Weebly. But the San Francisco-based company did not have solutions for merchants who opted to build their own websites. Square has more than 2 million merchants and is adding about 100,000 every quarter. PayPal has more than 13 million sellers. Both companies charge 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction in the U.S. for website sales. Square — which is run by CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also top boss at Twitter ( TWTR ) — also is announcing Register API, a method to integrate Square’s payments processing into any iOS point of sale. Square says that it’s adding Register API in recognition of the fact that some sellers have specialized needs for point-of-sale applications. Square stock closed up 2.5% at 13.74 on Tuesday. The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 51, where 99 is the highest. Wedbush analyst Gil Luria said that the stock’s recent volatility is largely because the company has a small float — relatively few shares are traded publicly. The float will change once the lockup period expires in May. Luria also has previously told IBD that Square is popular among short sellers.

PayPal Still Bests Payments Frenemies Apple, Facebook, Google

Investors may have sold off PayPal ( PYPL ) too quickly last week, an analyst says, after new Apple ( AAPL ) Pay features called into question PayPal’s longtime dominance in payments. Mark Palmer of BTIG wrote in a research note Monday that Apple Pay has a relatively small reach — Apple’s iOS has a 14% global market share — and PayPal is no stranger to competition, successfully fending off offerings from Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Facebook ( FB ) and Alphabet ( GOOGL ) over the years. Reports surfaced Wednesday that Apple Pay will be included in the Safari browser in time for holiday shopping this year. Doing so will help solve the perennial problem with mobile commerce: Shoppers prefer to buy on desktops and browse on mobile devices. PayPal, an IBD Leaderboard stock, fell 5 cents to 38.87 in early afternoon trading on the stock market today . The stock temporarily dropped nearly 8% intraday from an alternate 40.03 buy point Thursday, but closed down about 4%. PayPal’s 38.62 entry still holds for now. It has an IBD Composite rating of 93, where 99 is the highest. Despite the fact that PayPal executives have told IBD on several occasions that Apple Pay growth will actually help the company’s prospects — many of the merchants using Apple Pay process the payment through PayPal subsidiary Braintree — Palmer says that such an argument is a “stretch.” That’s because PayPal earns less if Braintree processes an Apple Pay transaction vs. if the customer uses PayPal. “With that said, we do agree that Braintree could serve as something of a mitigate to the competitive challenge posed by Apple Pay,” Palmer wrote. But threats to PayPal are nothing new, and the company has been fending off competition since it first launched in the late 1990s. Alphabet’s Google Checkout made its debut in 2006, Palmer says, and Amazon Payments launched in 2007. Facebook has also launched Facebook Credits. None have unseated PayPal as payments king. “None of these offerings has diminished PayPal’s growth trajectory, as most recently demonstrated by its 29% foreign exchange-neutral increase in total payment volume during Q4, 2015,” Palmer wrote. Square Shift To Flexible Loans From Cash Advance Digital cash register maker and payments processor Square ( SQ ) said Thursday that it planned to transition its lending business, Square Capital, to flexible loans from its current cash-advance program. In a separate research note, Palmer questioned whether observers who suggested the company’s continued push into lending would drag its valuation down. Palmer, in the note, said that he didn’t believe that was the case because Square CEO Jack Dorsey — also top boss at Twitter ( TWTR ) — sees the lending business as part of a suite of products that add value to small businesses, not a stand-alone operation. To wit, in addition to the loans, Square offers marketing products and other financial services such as payroll that make small businesses (the bulk of Square’s customers) more efficient, Palmer wrote. Because of Square’s large base on merchants and the ease with which it can market loans, it can offer lenders extremely low acquisition costs, Palmer says. Its credit decisions based on the trove of transaction data have also produced a low default rate thus far. “As part of a cohesive bundle of services, SQ’s loan product should be regarded not as an anchor on its valuation but rather as a facilitator of increased growth, in our view,” Palmer wrote. “In the end, we see little reason Square Capital’s loan growth can’t approach the rates demonstrated by the company’s core payments business while enhancing its profitability.” Image provided by Shutterstock .