If there’s one company that is, perhaps desperately, trying to reinvent themselves as a mobile payment solution, it’s PayPal. Sure, PayPal makes those regrettable eBay purchases (we’ve all been there) and most online purchases super-easy, but over the past year or so, it’s been all about mobile, mobile, mobile for PayPal. We can’t blame them of course, mobile is where it’s at, and with more and more users doing more of their shopping on their smartphones and their tablets, why wouldn’t PayPal want to be a big player in mobile? During I/O 2014 today, Google previewing a number of apps coming to Android Wear and now PayPal has announced their official app heading to the platform soon.
Much like the company has already done with the Gear 2 line of wearables from Samsung, PayPal will be bringing a small, easy-to-use app to Android Wear. With the app, you’ll be able to make payments from your Android Wear watch and check your balance, that sort of thing. For those that work with PayPal – as I do – such an app will certainly have its benefits, businesses that deal with lots of payments will be able to keep track of things without constantly checking their smartphones – or worse – their computers. Still we can’t help but feel that PayPal is only interested in you spending more money with the use of such a nifty and helpful little app.
We won’t hold it against PayPal too much though, everyone wants us to spend more money and with such a big name app hitting Android Wear so soon after launch, it only goes to show that Google’s new platform has the right kind of support behind it. Whether or not merchants will offer special deals for those that want to pay with their watch remains to be seen, but we’re pretty sure that in the meantime they’ll perhaps look at you a little funny.
