PayPal Compares its New Transaction Tool to the Electrical Outlet

PayPal announced what it calls the first global payment platform open to outside developers today. The company said it believes the move will make PayPal a bigger business than eBay and help foster a future where online payment capabilities are like electrical outlets – ubiquitous, enabling, financially and technologically fecund. It’s an incredibly ambitious vision, but a logical one.

The new Application Programming Interface (API) is due to become available in early November. It will let software developers plug PayPal payment functionality into their systems to leverage the company’s transaction, currency and security capabilities. Most interesting to us was the electric outlet analogy.

The company’s announcement today began with a slickly produced video showing people making payments for goods using software inside physical shopping carts, refrigerators and televisions. The payments in these as-yet fictional scenes were processed by PayPal, of course.

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