PayPal has recently announced that it intends on opening an app store in 2010, allowing developers to provide software for customers. Invoicing apps or “daily deals” software will surely appeal to merchants on the web, or so claims Osama Bedier, PayPal Platform Business Unit and Emerging Technologies VP.
eBay did something similar in 2009, launching an open repository based on the Selling Manager suite of tools and a storefront for third party apps. Through the new initiative, PayPal wants to draw external developers to its side, not only use its payment system with external websites for checkout.
Mobile Payments will also be dealt with, once the App Store is open, since the devs will probably have to create software for each and every platform out there. For example, a PayPal button could even be added to a Flickr account, being used to purchase photo prints and there are even talks about cloud wallets, according to PayPal officials.
Amazon and Google are also interested in similar solutions, so competition should be tight.
[via infoworld]
