Point of sale payments prospect for PayPal

PayPal is working on - or at least thinking about - its opportunity to become a payment option at physical points of sale, alongside the established debit and credit card payment networks.

Scott Thompson, president of PayPal told Inside Business, "One of the big trends that's happening in Australia and around the world is all those devices in retail stores are actually now being connected to networks.

"We view that as a massive opportunity for PayPal, because now we can be a tender type, an option for payment at point of sale, because that device is essentially a computer when it's connected to a network.

"So, it's a fascinating, dramatic increase in the total addressable market for us."

Thompson did not elaborate on the point.

The PayPal president did, however, highlight a couple of other financial trends for the firm, which is a subsidiary of eBay.

He said the PayPal merchant services' business, which is two-thirds of total payment volume, "will become 90 per cent or 95 per cent three or four years from today."

Of PayPal's overall payments revenue, he said: "I think it's going to continue to grow very fast... PayPal will be bigger than eBay at some point."