As anticipated, eBay will be holding their annual analyst meeting on Wednesday March 11th. The main highlight of the meeting is expected to be future plans for eBay’s PayPal business.
John Donahoe has been quoted as saying he expects PayPal to be bigger than eBay itself. The company’s certainly been making moves to accommodate that, including a strojng push for mobile.
“Like most online companies, PayPal has plans for the mobile market,” reports Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek. “The company just announced a new hook-up with Research In Motion (RIMM) that makes PayPal an option for buying apps for BlackBerry devices. And for the future, Stephenson says, they are also working on ways to make PayPal available on billions of lower-end phones that lack Net access—even phones owned by people who don’t have credit cards or bank accounts.”
PayPal is also trying to come up with a way for developers to create new ways for users to implement the service.
eBay has experienced a storm of criticism over discontinuing the acceptance of checks and money orders, but stands firm ion their position that it will ultimately benefit most eBay users. There is a chance that directing more attention to PayPal will help the company’s stock. PayPal’s senior Vice-President Jack Stephenson says he doesn’t feel the stock market properly values PayPal, so they’re going to give more visibility on that side of eBay’s business.
In the meantime, other sites are popping up to allow users dissatisfied with PayPal and / or eBay the chance to use an alternative form of marketing, whether it be as a buyer or a seller.
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