PayPal prepares better payment tools for social gamers

In late October the online payments giant PayPal is launching a new pack of developing tools to streamline payment process for social gamers while also attracting new gamers who experience problems when topping up their virtual currency accounts.

“Right now, if I’m playing a game, I have to leave the flow, go to a different web site, authenticate myself, authorize a payment and then come back to the game,” said Osama Bedier, the vice president of product development at PayPal. “We’re going to have an inline shopping experience where you can authorize a transaction on the screen right there in the game.”

The launch will be paired with a new micropayments feature, which will give players the option to continue the game while paying in increments of just 50 cents or a dollar. Right now, players usually have to top up in bigger increments of $10 or 20 to continue playing games.

“It makes sense to alter the point at which browsers become buyers,” he said, adding that PayPal has 87 million customers. The effect will be to have more a “metered” approach to gameplay, almost like the way you’d put an additional quarter or two in to play an arcade game.

“What I expect is to have the experience of ‘I want that virtual tractor!’ then I click on it and it automatically pulls from my account,” he said. “It will be like how long-distance phone calls are billed. It gets tallied up and you get billed at some normal interval. It takes all the friction out, allowing you to just enjoy the game.”