BYTE MARKS
PayPal opens window to e-commerce
By Burt Lum
How would you like to change that annoying "You've got mail!" to something far more desirable, like "You've got cash!"?
If PayPal has any say in the matter, that phrase will become ommonplace on the Internet.
The idea was hatched in 1998 to enable anyone with an e-mail address to send and receive cash. With a novel idea like that, the popularity of PayPal skyrocketed. As of late 2002, the service extends to 38 countries, Infoworld reported, with more than 17 million users and more than 3 million businesses involved.
The service is pretty straightforward. Let's say you wanted to send me $20. You would go to www.paypal.com and sign up for a free personal account. The PayPal system would send $20 to me by debiting your credit card or checking account. As a result, I would have $20 sitting in my PayPal account which I could then cash out or use for a transaction.
So, when going to a restaurant with friends, there is no excuse like, "I forgot my wallet." You can easily e-mail your portion via PayPal on your wireless personal digital assistant to your buddy who has been stuck with paying the bill.
And there's more: The service provides an extensive tool kit for starting up your own e-commerce store site. Rather than investing in your own e-commerce server or signing up with an ISP's e-commerce service, you can pay per transaction via PayPal.
As you venture into the realm of selling products on the Internet, PayPal provides you with shopping cart software and the capability to sell single to multiple items, subscriptions, donations, even collect political contributions.
As good as this all sounds, could PayPal be too good to be true?
On Oct. 3, PayPal was acquired by eBay, which could signal a change behind their practices. In the past some patrons of PayPal have had their accounts permanently locked. You can read about their frustrations at www.paypalsucks.com or www.aboutpaypal.org.
Perhaps success breeds discontent. You decide. ;-)
Burt Lum is a click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
