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Merchant acquirer and payment-technology developer Merchant Warehouse is adding PayPal acceptance to its Genius point-of-sale platform, the Boston-based company announced Monday.
Merchant Warehouse’s Genius system enables merchants to accept payments and to manage services like loyalty, mobile commerce, gift, and rewards programs. PayPal is activated remotely, requiring no action by merchants.
Consumers shopping at merchants that use a POS system integrated with the Genius platform will be able to use their PayPal app to check in at the merchant to make a payment. “Once a consumer performs a ‘check-in,’ a cashier could easily verify the customer by simply selecting the customer’s profile picture within their point of sale to facilitate the final payment,” says Marc Castrechini, Merchant Warehouse vice president of product management.
This marks the first time Merchant Warehouse and PayPal Inc., eBay Inc.’s payments subsidiary, have worked together, Castrechini says. The two companies have discussed ways to combine the Genius platform with PayPal’s mobile wallet for the past two years, he adds.
“PayPal’s wildly successful consumer base and ongoing vision of enhancing the consumer experience have positioned them to be one of the leading mobile-wallet providers,” Castrechini says in an email to Digital Transactions News. “Genius provides an opportunity to enable widespread mobile-wallet acceptance points at businesses throughout the United States using a multitude of point-of-sale technologies.”
It wasn’t that long ago that merchant acquirers and independent sales organizations viewed PayPal with some trepidation, but that has changed as the formerly online-only payment provider has ventured into payments in brick-and-mortar stores and on mobile devices. In 2012, PayPal began actively recruiting ISOs to help boost PayPal acceptance in stores.
“To date, we have forged relationships with a number of ISOs, and are now focused on enabling these relationships to achieve our shared goals,” a PayPal spokesperson says. “As we are successful in developing the partner channel, we will expand with additional ISO’s that share a similar vision to make payments simple while adding value to merchants. “
The merchant-acquiring industry overall has reconsidered PayPal, says researcher and consultant Adil Moussa, principal at Adil Consulting. It happened “the day PayPal decided to collaborate as well as compete with the industry,” he says.
“The industry is protective of its space and anybody that threatens to come and bypass the industry is not seen favorably,” Moussa says. “But since PayPal decided to be an alternative that acquirers can use, it proved to be a solution that benefited everybody.”
There is another aspect, too, that may affect the perception of PayPal within the merchant-acquiring and ISO industry. The threat may have been more of an issue about perception than reality.
“PayPal came to the point of sale with a lot of hype and expectations, which made it seem like a big threat,” says Rick Oglesby, senior analyst at Double Diamond Group, a Centennial, Colo.-based consulting firm. “The reality has been that over time PayPal’s efforts at the POS have fallen short of expectations, so the perceived threat is much smaller now.
“That being said, this is still a good thing for Merchant Warehouse because it demonstrates the ability of the Genius platform to quickly and seamlessly offer new payments offerings. PayPal is still one of the biggest names in the business, and PayPal’s offering is distinctive, making it a good demonstration of the Genius platform’s capabilities.”
