During the PayPal X Innovate Developer Conference last week in San Francisco, CA, PayPal announced the launch of their new micropayments program called PayPal for Digital Goods. This new micropayment program will offer a faster, safer and more cost-effective way to send and receive micropayments – a major problem in the digital goods industry.

Facebook will be PayPal’s initial partner for the PayPal for Digital Goods micropayment program and will be used to purchase digital goods like Zynga’s FarmCash and other Facebook games and applications. Other companies and websites that will be using PayPal for Digital Goods include FT.com (Financial Times), Autosport.com, GigaOM, Justin.tv, Ooyala, Plimus, Tagged, Tyler Projects and Ustream.

This is good news for both merchants and consumers. For news and media companies, developers and bloggers like me, this is great news because PayPal for Digital Goods allows us offer and sell digital content on our websites and blogs and be able to receive payments automatically and have instant access to our PayPal funds.

I’m also a consumer and this development is also good news for me and other consumers because with PayPal for Digital Goods, we could quickly, easily and safely purchase digital goods like music, software and games online. For current PayPal users like me, this new micropayments program extends the value and usability of PayPal.

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

PayPal Unveils New Payment Solution for Digital Goods
Industry Leaders Facebook and FT.com Using PayPal to Simplify Micropayments for Digital Content

INNOVATE 2010, SAN FRANCISCO – Oct. 26, 2010 – PayPal today announced the upcoming availability of PayPal for digital goods, a new in-context, frictionless payment solution that lets consumers pay for digital goods and content in as little as two clicks, without ever having to leave a publisher’s game, news, music, video or media site. The online equivalent of dropping a quarter in the slot to buy a newspaper or play a video game, PayPal’s new solution solves a key problem for the digital goods industry by offering a faster, safer and more cost-effective way to send and receive micropayments globally.

The new solution offers PayPal’s competitive fee structure for micropayments, with pricing at 5 percent plus 5 cents for purchases under $12 — lower than the fees typically charged by payment processors in the digital goods industry. Every time a customer purchases content, publishers and merchants get paid quickly, giving them fast access to their funds. PayPal for digital goods will be available late fall this year.
At PayPal’s second annual Innovate developer conference, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg announced that Facebook will integrate PayPal’s new digital goods payment flow to make PayPal the way to make purchases on Facebook.

Several additional companies, including Autosport.com, FT.com, GigaOM, Justin.tv, Ooyala, Plimus, Tagged, Tyler Projects and Ustream announced that they are also using PayPal to monetize the growing opportunity in digital goods.

“Our readers want their news on demand, whether they’re on a laptop, a mobile phone or a tablet,” said Mary Beth Christie, head of product management at FT.com. “PayPal helps us provide the experience our customers expect, along with flexibility to experiment with payment mechanisms for subscriptions. This gives our customers the flexibility to pay for what they want, when they want.”

“The decision to purchase digital goods and content usually happens on impulse, so the act of paying needs to be as quick as that impulse,” said Sam Shrauger, PayPal’s vice president of global product strategy. “PayPal for digital goods is an ideal solution for game developers, newspapers, bloggers, media companies, and anyone who is looking to monetize premium digital content around the globe.”

Because PayPal for digital goods is built on PayPal’s sophisticated fraud prevention engine, developers don’t have to worry about building the systems required to protect customers’ sensitive financial information. PayPal is already one of the leading payment methods for digital goods, giving merchants global reach with 90 million accounts in 190 markets around the world. The company closed out 2009 with $2 billion of total payment volume for digital goods and reached $1.3 billion in the first half of 2010.

Innovate 2010 is the only developers conference dedicated to payments. The conference, at Moscone West in San Francisco from Oct. 26-27, brings together developers and industry experts to explore three main areas that are changing the way we pay: the phenomenal growth of mobile payments, the rise of social commerce and the move to Internet-enabled local payments.

Follow PayPal on Twitter: #xinnovate, @PayPal and @PayPalX. For additional information please visit www.paypal.com/digitalgoods, or www.x.com.

About PayPal

PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 90 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later.

More information about the company can be found at PayPal.com. PayPal is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and its international headquarters is located in Singapore.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, the first WordCamp for 2009 will be held this coming weekend, January 10-11 at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Why am I excited about this event? Only one reason. I’m attending it! Yes folks, I’ll be attending WordCamp: Las Vegas. I’m both surprised and happy that I’ll be accomplishing one of my blog goals for 2009 so soon, which is to attend a WordPress WordCamp.

To those who aren’t familiar with what WordCamp is all about, here’s a little info.

What is WordCamp:Las Vegas?
WordCamp:Las Vegas is a conference style event covering topics related to the WordPress software. We are also planning for Unconference style sessions in the afternoon to let the people attending WordCamp help choose the topics discussed at WordCamp:Las Vegas.

Who Should Attend WordCamp:Las Vegas?
No matter if you are a casual user, full time blogger, plugin developer, theme designer or if you are curious about getting in to blogging for the first time, WordCamp:Las Vegas promises to have a little something for everyone.

It takes about 4 hours drive to get to Las Vegas from our place. Me and my friend Allan will be driving there Sunday morning, so we’ll have to leave at about 3 AM to get there on time for registration and breakfast. If you plan to attend and stay overnight or the whole weekend so you could also do some sightseeing in Vegas, you’ll have to book your hotel as soon as possible because CES 2009 and Affiliate Summit are in town at the same time so most hotels are gonna be booked.

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas right? NOT! There will be free WiFi so I plan to live blog the event and most definitely post photos while I’m there or when I get back home. I’m also excited coz I’m gonna get more WordPress schwag aside from the WordCamp: Las Vegas tshirt. I’ll be giving them away at the end of the month to my top commentators so if you’re interested, better start commenting now.

Although I’ll only be attending the Sunday session, I’m still looking forward to this event because of the great line up of speakers scheduled to talk on that day. Here’s the complete list of speakers for WordCamp Las Vegas:

• Matt Mullenweg
• Joseph Scott
• Aaron Hockley
• Lorelle VanFossen
• Jim Kukral
• Geoff Kleinman
• Liz Strauss
• Michael Dorausch
• Micah Baldwin
• Dave Taylor
• Micah Baldwin
• Shayne Sanderson
• Ethan Gahng
• Chris Brogan
• Jim Turner
• Niran Amir
• Warren Whitlock

Registration
WordCamp Las Vegas is a two day event and the registration fee is $20. There are limited seats/tickets so if you’re interested you better act right away.

Registration includes:
- Admission to all speakers & breakout sessions for both days
- WordCamp: Las Vegas T-Shirt
- Entry for door prize drawings throughout the weekend

Everyone is invited! For those of you who are in the area and are interested to attend, you still have until noon time of Friday, January 9 to register. Btw, registration is only available online because there will be no on-site registration.

Can’t make it to WordCamp Las Vegas? Don’t worry coz the event will be streamed live via UStream. You’ll have to register to UStream to be able to watch it. You can help spread the word and promote WordCamp: Las Vegas. You can also check the schedule or the list of attendees. I’m at number 80.

If you want to be updated to the progress and latest updates of WordCamp: Las Vegas, you can follow @lvwordcamp on Twitter.

Anyone else attending WordCamp: Las Vegas? I’d love to get to talk and meet you in person or even have a photo taken together.