PayPal has just announced the launch of Mobile Checkout, a service allowing consumers in the U.S. , U.K. and Canada to buy items securely using cell phones and the mobile web. The partnership with GPShopper, the leader in mobile product search technology, enables PayPal users to search for products from PayPal merchants, see product descriptions, images and then buy products from their mobile phones.

Mobile Checkout is a simple payment mechanism for consumers on-the-go and merchants with online storefronts. From www.mobile.paypal.com, consumers click “Buy Something” where they then can find products they want to buy, see featured products, browse mobile stores, or find mobile storefronts over the mobile internet.

GPShopper has the only proven solution for enabling consumers to search and share products and promotions straight from their cell phone. Scaled to handle billions of products listed at millions of locations for millions of users any where in the world makes GPShopper a fantastic fit for PayPal.

Earlier this month Sprint and GPShopper announced the launch of Slifter, the first mobile local product search application that employs GPS technology to find products at neighboring retail locations.

PayPal earns its money by charging a transaction fee of 30 cents per transaction and up to 4.9 percent of the payment amount. With nearly 7,000 employees worldwide and plans to hire around 600 more this year PayPal is leading the way with stats like these:

• PayPal had 143 million accounts in March and expects to keep growing.
• PayPal accounted for $439 million of eBay’s $1.77 billion in just the last quarter.
• PayPal handled 177 million transactions worth $11.36 billion during the first quarter.

Source: 5W Public Relations

They are not out pacing credit cards yet, but the use of alternate payment solutions by mainstream retail webs is on the rise.

The e-commerce consulting firm Brulant has published a comparison showing the results from an October 2006 survey and a February 2007 follow up survey. This study shows that the largest e-commerce online stores are reporting an 267% increase in the use of non-traditional payment methods.

In October, the firm Brulant Principal Stephen Morris took a close look at the payment methods on the 100 largest sites in their survey which included Federated, Staples, Wal-Mart, Target, JC Penney, The Home Depot and Rite Aid. For this survey, they considered non-traditional payments to be Bill Me Later, Google Checkout and PayPal. Although a 267 % increase sounds like a huge increase in non-traditional payments, the same survey also showed that only 24 percent of the tracked sites offered any alternative payment.

Veteran E-Commerce analyst Patti Freeman Evans—who tracks retail trends for Jupiter Research had this to say,

“Bill Me Later, Pay Pal, and Google Checkout have all been very aggressive over the last 8 months or so in terms of acquiring new retailers to feature their products,” Evans said, “so the increase is not wholly surprising.” *Storefrontbacktalk.com

2/21/2007 - Its official, the wildly popular Graphcard will be back online offering virtual prepaid credit cards in about 72 hrs. They have signed an agreement with a new prepaid card provider and are in the process of updating their web. The transition should take another 2 days so look for sales to begin early next week.

I’m am a big fan and supporter of online payment methods which allow those people without a credit card to shop and spend online.

Graphcard is this kind of platform. Its free to join and they offer multiple account payment methods (including e-gold). To assist overseas shoppers, they were even offering postal addresses in the US.

Graphcard is targeting a very large global market of Internet users who don’t have a credit card. Their e-commerce platform was originally developed to enable local and remote Internet users without cards to equally participate in global e-commerce.

Targeting the under served countries of the world, Graphcard is surely to experience more success in the coming years. If you are an Internet user without a credit card, you will want to check out Graphcard. I have enjoyed using their product very much over the last few year.