PayPal and Apple have struck a fairly remarkable deal: now you can use Paypal in the Apple iTunes store and elsewhere. News of the deal on Wednesday sent PayPal’s stock price up to an all time high of $56.99.
Now you can just very easily choose PayPal as a payment option when you shop in the iTunes store on your iPhone or iPad. Previously the app store et al only accepted debit and credit cards when you wanted to buy anything. The deal is good for both parties. PayPal users are loyal and now they have a new way to pay Apple. And for Apple users, who don’t want to give up their card details, they can decide whether they trust PayPal more.
And once PayPal has been selected, all future purchases with the customer’s Apple ID will be automatically charged to their PayPal account. This includes purchases of apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books, as well as Apple Music subscriptions and iCloud storage.
As PayPal say on their blog: “Available in the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, PayPal customers will be able to pay for App Store, Apple Music, iTunes and iBooks purchases across iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices using their PayPal account. This provides a secure and versatile payment method to meet the growing demand for digital entertainment. PayPal’s availability across Apple’s services further expands our vision of providing customers a variety of ways to easily make mobile purchases, such as asking Siri to make a payment using the PayPal app.”
It’s nearly two years to the week since PayPal and eBay divorced. It seems that in the intervening 2 years that both companies have enjoyed benefits from their independence. But PayPal’s star is clearly shining more brightly than eBay’s.
This Amazon deal is remarkable. Will a deal with Amazon be next?
