In today’s nonstop-discount marketplace, virtually every shopper has purchased an item at what seems to be a fair price — only to kick oneself a week later when it pops up in a much cheaper sale.
PayPal
PayPal Ups Ante in Holiday Season Price-Matching Wars
The battle for holiday shopper dollars continues with the launch of the most impressive-sounding price-matching policy offered yet. As it turns out, the policy isn’t being offered by a retailer, but the payment processor PayPal.
PayPal-Discover Pact Boosts Mobile Payments Momentum
The mobile payments/digital wallet drama now unfolding is fascinating for three reasons: First, paying with your mobile phone is the most fundamental shift in retail commerce since the credit card was invented 60 years ago. …
Walmart, Target Challenge Google, Square as Mobile Payments Heat Up
Retail titans like Walmart, Target and Best Buy are challenging tech upstarts like Google, Paypal and Square for advantage as the mobile payments space heats up.
Next Frontier of Consumerism: Couch-Potato Shopping
Would You Buy Stuff at a Garage Sale With a Credit Card?
Every summer, phone poles fill up with colorful fliers advertising events like garage sales, flea markets and bake sales. But this year, you’re more likely than ever to pay with plastic for that tchotchke or cupcake. A new study …
I Just Sold My Phone Number to Google for the Price of a Latte
I feel so cheap. After years of turning down Google’s request for my number, I handed it over today for a lousy $5.
It must have been the promise of coffee that made me do it. In case you missed it, Google Offers had a deal …
PayPal Makes a Play for Small Businesses With ‘Here’
PayPal, a division of EBay, is making a play at small merchants with the introduction of its new “Here” device, which enables small businesses to accept both PayPal account numbers and major credit cards using nothing more …
Watch Out Visa and MasterCard: PayPal Is Coming to a Brick-and-Mortar Store Near You
Products like Square and early mobile wallet innovations are already nipping at the heels of the traditional payment-processing infrastructure that merchants use every time you swipe a card to buy something at a store.
But …
Big Deal: A Major New Player (eBay’s PayPal) Enters the Daily Deal Market
Without question, Groupon has been a tremendous business success story thus far, inspiring the legions on copycat daily deal sites, along with the previously unheard-of notion that coupons can, in fact, be cool. The latest major force to leap into the field dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial is PayPal, which is expected to start …
Can You Buy Stuff Online Without a Credit Card?
Last week, Apple introduced OS X Lion, the newest version of its Mac operating system. Among the usual tech buzz about features, innovations and glitches was Apple’s striking choice to make OS X Lion available only via the Mac …
Rage Against the eBay-PayPal Machine
After the SF Chronicle published a very brief Q&A with PayPal president Scott Thompson, readers unleashed a slew of angry comments about eBay and its sister company, “Greedpal,” err, Paypal. Comments like: “Dishonest and insufficiently secure: the wave of the future!” and “Ebay + PayPal = Greed.” And: “ebay is now a giant flea-market of …
