Yahoo! has announced a partnership with PayPal to add easy identification to those merchants taking advantage of PayPal Express Checkout. In striking this deal with Yahoo!, PayPal, an escrow service originally established as a payment system between buyers and sellers conducting business on eBay, is aiming to make it even easier for users to discover which merchants offer PayPal as an easy payment option.
Now, when searching for a product or service with Yahoo! search, users will now see a small blue shopping cart icon next to some of the merchant results listed. Simply put, those merchant sporting this icon support PayPal as a payment option.
Of course, the main benefit of escrow services such as PayPal is the ability to securely store all your payment and personal information in one location, eliminating the need to re-enter these details at every online checkout at countless different online vendors. Not only this, but your most valuable details are never revealed to the merchants.
Targeting advertisers and consumers alike, Yahoo! is confident that this added feature will help its sponsored search customers stand out by showing their support for a secure, express service managed by two of the best known online brands.
This Yahoo! PayPal Express Checkout Program is being launched with a number of special offers for merchants and there is absolutely no cost to join until the end of 2007. Once signed up, the merchant can expect the PayPal cart icon to show against their listing after ten days, with appropriate credits appearing in their account not long after that.
In forming a partnership with PayPal, Yahoo! are directly challenging the independent payment service from Google, Google Checkout, which was launched in 2006. As this Google service gains popularity - Google Checkout has just been launched in the UK - it's not out of the realms of possibility that the company will incorporate a similar identity feature alongside natural and paid search results.
