As we’ve reported in the past, PayPal announced an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer. That retailer is Home Depot, we’ve learned from PayPal.
PayPal said of the Home Depot announcement: We frequently run trials with our retail partners. In this case, PayPal and The Home Depot are engaged in a limited pilot program for new POS technologies. The pilot is currently being run in five stores and involves a small number of PayPal employees.
Gil Luria of Investment house Wedbush Securities also put out a research note today that confirmed that the first retailer is the Home Depot.
Basically, via the pilot customers (PayPal employees) are able to pay for items via their PayPal account at Home Depot’s point of sale systems. They can either use a pin code or a specialized PayPal ctedit card that can be swiped, the the payment amount will be deducted from their PayPal account.
The bigger vision of the in-store integrations are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. While exact details are still unclear, it sounds like PayPal will use location and transaction data to help in-store retailers improve the experience for consumers.
We heard recently that PayPal is partnering with at least 20 other known top-tier retailers, which will be unveiled later this year.