In the race to ensure PayPal's relevance in the increasingly competitive jungle of checkout options available to merchants, PayPal wants its small-business customers to have many of the same tools as the largest retailers, including Apple Pay.
PayPal has added the capability for small businesses using its Advanced Checkout service to accept Apple's mobile wallet, along with the ability for customers to save their preferred payment methods, PayPal announced Tuesday.
Shoppers on participating small-business sites now have five distinct options for checking out. First is a button representing all the major credit card networks, followed by separate buttons for PayPal, Pay Later (PayPal's buy now/pay later lending service), Venmo and Apple Pay, PayPal said in a press release.
The upgrade also includes capabilities to automatically update returning shoppers' card account data, PayPal said.
The move enables smaller merchants to shift certain payment card security responsibilities required by the card networks to PayPal, a company spokesperson said. As a result, smaller merchants will have access to PayPal's card network tokenization services that will automatically update lost, stolen or expired cards shoppers have stored on participating retailers' sites.
Until now, those options — plus the ability to accept Apple Pay — were available only to its larger enterprises through its Braintree subsidiary, PayPal said.
PayPal's push to enrich the checkout services available to smaller merchants is part of the San Jose, California-based payments firm's drive to stay "top of phone" with consumers, said Hugh Tallents, a senior partner and financial services practice lead at New York-based consulting firm cg42.
"Just like banks are fighting for their cards to keep the 'top of wallet' status with consumers, PayPal and its Venmo subsidiary want to be the first choice for consumers checking out on any-size retailers' website," Tallents said.
