The PayPal Blog

PayPal Goes Green

Hi blog readers.  I’m Scott Thompson, the president of PayPal, and I’m back with more news.  Later today, I’ll be joining eBay CEO John Donahoe and the mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, to officially open the newest building at the PayPal campus in San Jose.

Today’s activities mark an important environmental milestone for both PayPal and eBay Inc.  Our new building was designed from the ground up in accordance with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Gold standard.  LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an industry standard, third-party rating system which certifies that our building has met a rigorous set of criteria for constructing an environmentally responsible and healthy place to work.

Some of the features of our new building include:

• Energy conservation.  Internal lighting is connected to a dimming system that automatically dims artificial lights based on the amount of sunlight entering the building.  The system conserves energy, since the amount of artificial light is minimized based on the level of natural light.
• Water conservation.  Low-flow fixtures in faucets, showerheads and other areas have been installed throughout the building to reduce the amount of water used every day by 30%.
• Recycled materials.  From carpet to doors to steel, many of the materials used to construct our new building include recycled content.  For example, the structural steel used was 80% post-consumer and 15% post-industrial.
• Indoor air quality.  Before our employees moved in, the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning was flushed to eliminate construction pollutants.  And many of the building materials like the furniture, paint, sealants and carpet are low in volatile organic compounds.   

Last but not least, we’ve covered every inch of available roofing on all the campus buildings with solar panels.  Our system of 3,300 panels makes up more than an acre and will take 15-18% of demand completely off the power grid.

The green features of this building truly represent the values and priorities of our employees.  Globally at eBay Inc., there are more than 1000 employee volunteers who have contributed to causes and organizations that support the environment.  We’re excited to support environmentally responsible business development and proud of our fantastic employees.

-Scott

Myanmar Relief Efforts

Hi everyone.  I'm Judy Chang from the nonprofit team at PayPal. 

The recent cyclone in Myanmar is reported to have claimed the lives of over 22,000 people, with another 41,000 reported as missing. The United Nations has reported that up to one million people could be left homeless as a result of the disaster.

News reports describe heartbreaking scenes of people looking for loved ones amidst devastating wreckage. Clean water, food, medicine and shelter are scarce. Aid organizations have just recently been allowed to enter the country to distribute supplies to the cyclone survivors.

It’s hard to watch the news footage, especially when many people feel like they are powerless to help. But many organizations have already rallied to provide support and aid.  So PayPal and eBay partnered with our friends at MissionFish to establish a fund that will be distributed to agencies performing relief and recovery work in the area.

Here are a few ways you can help:

• Donate to relief organizations with PayPal. (click on the donate button below)

• Buy or sell on eBay, where proceeds can be donated to benefit the relief organizations.
• Donate to the United Nations World Food Programme here.

We hope you’ll be moved to help.

Mobile Banking with Sprint and PayPal

Hi, I’m Menekse Gencer from PayPal’s Mobile team.  Imagine you’re at the airport and you get a text message from your sister: “just bought mom flowers from us 4 mothers day. u owe me 20”.  Or maybe you’re at the farmer’s market and just ran out of cash, but really want to get those delicious apples.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay without ever reaching for your wallet or searching for an ATM?

If you’re a Sprint customer, you can do just that.  Thanks to our partners Sprint and mFoundry, we now offer PayPal’s Send Money functionality within Sprint’s new mobile banking application MyMoneyManager.

And the best part is that it’s free and easy.  Just go to https://www.paypal.com/sprint to download the application on your Sprint phone.  Then, look for the PayPal Send Money icon.  With just a few clicks, you’ll be sending money instantly to anyone with an email address or mobile phone number via your PayPal account.

Within a minute, your sister will get a phone call,  text message or email letting her know she has money in her PayPal account. Pretty cool?  Yeah, we think so, too!

And, all your mobile money transfers are kept safe because PayPal Mobile uses the same state-of-the-art technology PayPal uses online.

So if you’re a Sprint customer, try it out and let us know what you think.  We can’t say that it’ll change your life completely, but maybe…just maybe…your friends will like you a little bit more because you always pay them back on time.

Recently Heard on PayPal Radio

Hello!  Jason Miner, host of PayPal Radio returning to fill you in on some of our recent broadcasting activity.  While it’s taken until the past week or so for new episodes of your favorite TV shows to return to the air, we’ve been broadcasting new episodes throughout the winter and spring, and we’re not stopping for the summer, either!   

We’ve had a veritable Who’s Who of PayPal employees, including many friends of the PayPal Blog, stopping by for recent broadcasts, so I thought I’d bring you up to date if you’ve missed the show.

On our March 25th show, Matt Lundgaard gave us the details about the new Payment Review process, while Sarah Livnat dug deep into the benefits of expanded seller protection for PowerSellers.  Plus, Jonathan Garriss - a PowerSeller on eBay and successful website merchant - shared his insight into selling online through multiple channels.

On our April 8th episode, Monroe Labouisse talked about the Safer Payments program for eBay and PayPal, including answering some frequently asked questions about Payment Holds for eBay Items.  German Scipioni then joined me to talk about the PayPal Plug-In, a download that simplifies shopping online with PayPal. 

Every show ends with an open phones segment, so if you would like to be on the show, your chance is just a phone call away.  If you’re already listening, thanks for your continued support of the show, and if you haven’t checked us out, feel free to scan our archived broadcasts for a topic or two of interest.

A Practical Approach to Managing Phishing

Hi, I’m Michael Barrett, chief information security officer at PayPal.

I joined PayPal almost exactly two years ago.  Within the first couple of weeks, I sat down with my colleague who runs the team responsible for our anti-phishing programs and we evaluated PayPal’s strategy for combating phishing.  We realized that our strategy focused on preventing financial loss to our customers’ accounts, and we did this quite well since we always reimburse users 100 percent if their accounts are accessed by a fraudster.  But we also realized that there was a holistic dimension that our approach was missing – how do we prevent phishmail from getting to our customers in the first place?

Since then, we've completely rethought our approach to how we deal with phishing, and deployed many barriers to help reduce its impact to our customers and our business.  We've been executing against this strategy for close to 18 months, and have a great deal of first-hand experience about what works, and what doesn't.  Over that period of time, we've been able to move PayPal from being one of the most phished brands on the Internet to a much less prominent target.

A certain number of people in the Information Security business have become fatalistic and seem to believe that phishing is an unsolvable problem.  Our experience suggests this is far from the case, and that if organizations adopted the techniques we've demonstrated, we can collectively make the Internet a great deal safer for our customers.

I speak quite a bit on this topic at Information Security conferences around the world.  One of the questions that I'm often asked is this: "The presentation was great, but where can I find more information?"  We therefore thought that an excellent way to address this question was to lay out our strategy in more detail.  So, my colleague Dan Levy and I wrote a paper on the topic, which we’ve published today in conjunction with the RSA Conference, which is the largest security conference in the world.

If you're in the IT or Information Security business, we think you'll find it to be useful and relevant.  I invite you to download the whitepaper here. (you may need to right click and select Save As)

Something New in the Air

Hello again, I'm Tyler Hoffman, senior director of enterprise merchant services at PayPal.

The snow is melting, spring break is over and it's time to start thinking about your summer travel plans.  And here at PayPal we're doing our part to help you - by welcoming a sixth airline to our stable of travel partners. 

JetBlue, one of the nation's most popular carriers, now enables passengers to pay for tickets via PayPal at JetBlue.com.  Whether it's a weekend in New York, a getaway to California, some downtime in the Caribbean, or any place in between, JetBlue and PayPal have you covered.  So go online today and plan that vacation now (let's face it, by the time Memorial Day arrives, you're going to need it). 

Then you can sit back, relax, and look forward to enjoying JetBlue's great service, comfy leather seats, extra legroom, and hours of free DirecTV.  Hey, now that I think about it, I may not be able to wait for summer...hold my calls.

Introducing eBay Ink…

Hi everyone, I’m Richard Brewer-Hay and I’m the editor of the newly launched eBay Ink blog. (I know. I know… another blog?!) We felt that were so many great conversations happening on both side of the eBay fence, covering all manner of topics from PayPal to eBay Desktop, but there was no one place to access it all simultaneously.

That’s where eBay Ink comes in. My goal as the author of this blog is to create the ultimate online database of opinion – from all angles - incorporating the best of what’s coming out of existing official blogs, such as this one, and existing external blogs (of which the list seems endless!).

To help do this, in addition to my core blog posts, there are two modules on the eBay Ink homepage: one is called, "you say…” and the other is called, "we say..." The "you say…" module provides a collection of news and online discussions from around the Web, including posts from external blogs.

The "we say..." module offers a collection of the latest posts from other official eBay, PayPal and Skype blogs. There is also a blog roll on the homepage that lists all existing eBay blogs - from the newly launched eBay Insider to the Skype Heartbeat blog.

We just launched today so please bear with me as I get my legs under me. Feel free to check us out though and let me know what you think by posting comments or shooting me an email.

Cheers!
Richard.

Shop with Your PayPal Account at CompUSA

Hello, I’m Mary Anne Gillespie, PayPal’s vice president of sales for our merchant services division.  Since joining the company late last year, my team and I have been focused on giving consumers more places to shop with their PayPal accounts by enabling more merchants to accept PayPal payments.

I’m excited to tell you that CompUSA.com - one of the internet’s leading retailers of computers, laptops, televisions, software and more – has enabled customers to pay with PayPal Express Checkout.  Now, you can shop for your next electronics item with the safety and security of PayPal and checkout quickly with just a few clicks.  And for a limited time, CompUSA is offering up $20 cash-back to shoppers who use PayPal as their payment method – good on purchases over $200.

Stay tuned for more updates as my team brings you more places to shop with PayPal.

Safer Payment Methods on eBay

Hi, it’s Monroe Labouisse again. I’m director of PayPal’s business on eBay in North America. In my last blog post, I talked about eBay’s new seller standards and payment holds. Today, I want to talk to you about eBay’s Safer Payments initiative more generally, because the site changes that enforce these new requirements are now live on eBay.com. First, let me reiterate the purpose of Safer Payments on eBay, and then I’ll tell you more about what’s live now.

Across all of eBay’s biggest marketplaces, there is one clear goal in 2008: improve the overall customer experience.  Enough buyers have told eBay and PayPal that shopping on eBay can be a hassle and for this reason they’re not coming back to shop as often as they used to. I’m sure you’ve heard this from friends, family, customers, and you’ve probably even experienced it yourself. I know I have.

Improving the customer experience for buyers means making eBay a place to get great value and selection from sellers they can trust.  For sellers, it means that eBay will reward those who deliver great service and provide a superior experience to buyers.   Of course, the biggest reward for sellers as a result of these changes will be increased sales driven by repeat buyers who are satisfied with the good experience they’ve had shopping on eBay. The Safer Payments initiative fits squarely into this strategy.

Safer Payments is aimed at increasing buyers’ use of eBay by making safe, familiar payment methods more widely available. By doing this, it is less likely that buyers will experience fraud or unresponsive sellers, and more likely that if they do they will have recourse to fix any issues or problems that may arise.  So, that’s why this week the following changes have gone into effect on eBay in the US:

1.  Sellers or items that meet one or more of the following conditions will be required to offer PayPal or a major credit card.

• the seller has higher than 5% buyer dissatisfaction rates
• the seller has less than 100 feedback
• the items are listed in categories with higher rates of buyer complaints, including: Gift Certificates, Video Games, Cell Phones, Computers and Consumer Electronics

2.  To protect buyers in the very small percentage of situations where eBay and PayPal believe that a transaction is likely to result in a dissatisfied buyer, PayPal will delay the release of funds to a seller for up to 21 days.  The funds will appear in the seller’s account as pending and will be released if there is no dispute filed by a buyer within 21 days.  The funds may be released earlier if the buyer leaves positive feedback, or if PayPal can confirm delivery of the item.

As I said in my last blog post, transaction holds will be used in very rare circumstances.  In the announcement on eBay from John McDonald, he made it clear when you as a seller will not experience holds, and I urge you to check those conditions because they apply to the vast majority of transactions. And please remember a few things: 1) we’re making these changes because we’re trying hard to improve buying experiences on eBay and drive repeat business for eBay sellers; 2) transaction holds are very common in e-commerce, and in fact most major credit cards, banks, and ecommerce marketplaces have similar policies; and 3) those sellers enrolled in the PayPal Money Market Fund will continue to earn interest on all of your funds – including funds that are on hold.

3.  Finally, we’re excited to release a new incentive for PowerSellers: expanded seller protection from PayPal. As you may know, the criteria for becoming a PowerSeller has recently changed. Sellers qualify for PowerSeller benefits only when they provide excellent service to buyers.  And as a reward for that service, PowerSellers in the US now enjoy expanded seller protection on eBay. Read more about it from my colleague Sarah Livnat.

In closing, I want to repeat the purpose of the Safer Payments initiative: increasing buyers’ use of eBay by making it safe, which in turn should drive more sales and better prices to sellers.  Improving the buyer experience also means that eBay will reward sellers who deliver great service to buyers.  That’s why I urge all sellers reading this, especially the very few who have a payment held, to implement ecommerce best practices such as offering safe electronic payment methods, shipping promptly, communicating clearly, using tracking for shipments, and providing that tracking to your buyers and to PayPal.  The fastest way to have a payment hold released is to deliver the item to the buyer with tracking and provide PayPal with the tracking number.  And the best way to rejuvenate sales growth on the eBay marketplace is for sellers to work as hard as possible to provide great experiences to their buyers.

Regards,
Monroe

West Coast Developer Days

Hi everyone (and especially our developer community), I’m Damon Williams and I’m back again with some more news for developers.  Last year we came up with the idea to travel to cities around the U.S. and provide free PayPal developer training - and so we created a series of events called PayPal Developer Days. We visited cities in Florida, New York, and Texas to host day-long educational events, at which we could meet our developer community in person, teach them some advanced concepts in a classroom setting, and answer any questions they had. 

We were delighted with how these events turned out – every city was filled to capacity and we received great feedback that attendees came away with valuable new skills and information.

We're keeping the ball rolling this year with the addition of six West Coast dates for PayPal Developer Days.

3/31 - Las Vegas
4/1 - Los Angeles
4/3 - San Francisco
4/7 - San Jose
4/9 - San Diego
4/10 - Phoenix

These events are free, and we're even buying lunch.  Additionally, attendees have the chance to take the PayPal Certified Developer exam at no cost, if they choose to do so.

Space is limited, so register now if you’d like to attend!