PayPal, as the world’s largest payment platforms, is in a good position to allow developers to integrate their services with the company’s secure infrastructure.
To that end, PayPal today has announced the expansion of a group of REST APIs to Canadian developers, enabling features such as tokenization as well as a backend website for to track transactions and monitor the status of tools.
The APIs made available to developers include payment processing and immediate settlement, and the expansion marks the first time these tools are available in currencies other than the US dollar.
PayPal initially released these tools to US-based developers in March, part of an announcement at SXSW where the company promised to modernize its tools to abide by the latest standards like REST, JSON and OAuth. Since that availability, over 50,000 developers have taken steps to make PayPal a payment processor for their products.
Online credit card payments, like those facilitated by PayPal, are becoming increasingly important to developers, both on the web and in mobile apps. As users become more comfortable with online transactions, and reliant on the cheaper goods obtained from them, the push to reduce friction between front- and backend portals has increased.
With companies like Mastercard piloting its payment platform MasterPass in Canada, and major banks like CIBC and RBC taking steps to enter the mobile payments game, it’s incumbent on PayPal to maintain its lead position. Courting developers, in Canada and elsewhere, is a good first step.