PayPal outlines vision for mobile ‘wallet in the cloud’

PayPal has outlined its vision for providing consumers with a mobile ‘wallet in the cloud’, but revealed it is agnostic about NFC as a technology for turning that aim into reality, ReadWriteWeb reports.

Paypal

Speaking at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida last week, Fabio Sisinni from PayPal’s mobile team said the vision was not just for smartphones and that PayPal’s ideas include enabling set-top boxes, TVs and billboards as well.

When asked about NFC, Sisinni stressed that PayPal is not betting on just this one new technology. The company’s goal is to be a “technology agnostic wallet in the cloud,” he said. The service, he added, had to be ubiquitous and work on any device running any operating system.

Last year, PayPal teamed up with Bling Nation for a trial that allowed consumers to use their PayPal accounts to make payments in retail stores. The pilot took place in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Consumers were issued with a contactless sticker linked to their PayPal account which they attached to the back of their mobile phone.

The firm also bought barcode-scanning application RedLaser last year and integrated Bump into PayPal’s mobile applications. With Bump’s technology, users can tap their phones together to text each other or send money.

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