PayPal Trials its New Zettle Point-of-Sale Terminal in the UK Market

PayPal is trialing a new point-of-sale (POS) solution for retailers in the UK. The Zettle Terminal is designed to provide an agile POS option for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Built to operate as a standalone option with no need for any pairings with other devices, Zettle is preloaded with a SIM card and uses a mixture of 4G and Wi-Fi connectivity to complete transactions in seconds.

If the Zettle Terminal proves successful, PayPal is also exploring incorporating a built-in barcode scanner to further accelerate the POS. Using Zettle, retailers will no longer require customers to queue at the till to pay for their goods. Instead, it’s possible for Zettle Terminals to be taken to the customer elsewhere in the store. Reports suggest that Zettle will be launched in North America and other markets in the coming weeks and months.

PayPal continues to be one of the most popular alternative payment methods among consumers in the US, so retailers stateside will be watching the Zettle trial with interest. 87.5% of consumers in North America use PayPal. This explains why burgeoning industries like New Jersey’s newly regulated iGaming sector are rapidly embracing PayPal and other e-wallets for deposits and withdrawals with the best NJ online casinos offering payment processing speeds in under 24 hours – significantly faster than conventional wire transfer and debit card transactions.

Jim Magats, senior vice president of payments and SMB solutions at PayPal, believes the Zettle Terminal provides an “entire store kit” that’s placed directly into the hands of small business owners. In doing so, retailers will be able to expedite payment processes and provide a more personalized, in-person shopping experience. In the UK alone, there were some 9.6 billion contactless transactions processed last year, with that figure only set to rise further still in 2021 and beyond. With consumers now expecting a slick, uninhibited buying experience, Zettle is a POS solution that’s increasingly a necessity rather than a “nice to have”.

PayPal opts against Pinterest buyout “at this time”

PayPal is continually seeking new ways to broaden its user base and the mooted takeover of social media image-sharing portal Pinterest looked like being an intriguing fit. The reports of a PayPal takeover of Pinterest came within weeks of PayPal CEO Dan Schulman intimating that “super apps” will soon be the way forward to handle all aspects of an individual’s financial services.

At the time of writing, Pinterest had a market capitalization of approximately $37 billion, having surged considerably since its $10 billion valuation at the time of its initial public offering (IPO). Given the huge expense of the takeover, PayPal has opted not to “pursue an acquisition at this time”.

A tie-up between PayPal and Pinterest would have enabled PayPal to integrate its commerce platform within Pinterest, enabling users to purchase goods and services with a PayPal account by clicking directly through to the retailers listed on the Pinterest posts. It would have been another string to the PayPal bow, since launching a high-yield savings account through Synchrony Bank, whilst also supporting investments in cryptocurrency.