PayPal is extending the software behind its PayPal Here payment-card-reading device so that the system will also work with brick-and-mortar stores’ existing countertop payment-card readers, TechCrunch reported on Thursday (Sept. 4).
The extension takes the form of a software development kit (SDK) and it is being implemented by GoDaddy and Ecwid. Those are the first two companies to offer services helping small businesses set up online storefronts. Other partners who want to use the SDK can also sign up with PayPal.
The SDK includes the ability to interact with conventional retail credit-card readers like those from MagTek. The software also lets merchants streamline payments, manage CRM and inventory, create and maintain invoices, calculate totals, discounts and taxes, and “provide a more personalized and engaging customer experience at checkout,” PayPal said in its announcement.
The bottom-up approach to expand PayPal Here from a plug-in mobile phone device into traditional small stores isn’t PayPal’s first brick-and-mortar move. In 2012 PayPal signed up dozens of large retail chains to add an in-store PayPal checkout option. But while Home Depot and other chains installed new point-of-sale terminals to support the service, PayPal acknowledged later that it got very little payment traffic through the large chains.
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