New Social Game Payment Tools Coming To PayPal

PayPal plans to launch a suite of new developer tools at the end of October, designed to make its service easier for social game players to use when buying virtual goods and other microtransaction items. The new tools will allow users to complete transactions completely in-app, without having to leave the game to authenticate payments through PayPal's Website. 

"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," said Osama Bedier, Vice President of Product Development at Paypal, in statements made to Inside Facebook. "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."

The new option will launch along with better support for microtransactions, allowing users to pay for items that cost as little as $.50. These new payment tools could circumvent the current need for users to buy virtual currency in bulk increments usually no smaller than $5. PayPal is currently testing the new payment flow with a handful of unnamed social game developers.

PayPal has been trying to make its service friendlier to social games and microtransaction purchases since at least earlier this year, when it changed the way it charged processing fees for microtransactions. The new billing method reduced fees charged to merchants, by calculating fees based on bulk amounts processed rather than charging per-transaction. 

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