PayPal has opened global payments platform PayPal X. The company unveiled new application programming interfaces (APIs), a new developer portal and introductory services pricing to help developers reap the financial benefits of building businesses on PayPal X. It has also demonstrated a mobile payment toolkit to embed payments directly into mobile applications, starting with iPhone.
PayPal has expanded its payment functionality for multiple recipients and on multiple platforms with new capabilities and enhancements for its Adaptive Payments APIs. New enhancements include currency conversion; pay anyone service that allows financial and other institutions to let their customers send money when logged in to their bank accounts without necessarily having a PayPal account.
In addition, new enhancements enable developers to create reusable payments agreements between buyers and sellers. While payment approval happens online, the actual money movement can occur offline at different intervals, and through multiple devices that are not necessarily internet-connected at the time, the company said.
The initial Adaptive Payments APIs have also been upgraded. According to PaPpal, developers can build person-to-person (P2P) or business-to-business (B2B) payment applications on their platform of choice. They can distribute funds from PayPal payments as they happen and can enable buyers to send money to several people in one payment.
The company has also introduced a beta of its Adaptive Accounts API to provide a signup experience for people who don’t have PayPal accounts while maintaining security and privacy of consumer data.
Reportedly, the mobile payment software development kit (SDK), a key component of PayPal X, makes it easier for developers to integrate PayPal into mobile applications to buy physical goods. With few lines of code, developers can add a checkout button to accept mobile payments without collecting any financial information. The mobile SDK, which will initially support iPhone is expected to be available in the first half of 2010.
PayPal also unveiled X.com, a new developer portal that contains all the information developers need to create applications built with PayPal X.