PayPal Adds VC Panel to PayPal X Innovate 2009 Conference

"Payments are becoming a game changing technology, with opportunities everywhere you look-and this is not lost on the VC community," said Osama Bedier, vice president of PayPal Platform and Emerging Technology. "Developer innovation has been stifled until now because it's so hard to make money. It's not about technology, it's about solving fundamental challenges people face when trying to pay or get paid."

"By opening up its payments platform, PayPal is essentially giving developers the tools to easily monetize their ideas, which has been a long-time challenge," added Dana Stalder, general partner, Matrix Partners. "This will be of significant importance to the VC community and marks a major shift in payments as we know it."

PayPal X Innovate 2009 will also feature keynote addresses from eBay Inc. CEO John Donahoe, PayPal President Scott Thompson and Vice President of Platform and Emerging Technology Osama Bedier. Publisher and Web 2.0 activist Tim O'Reilly will close out the first day of the conference with the afternoon keynote. Other speakers include innovative developers and partners who will unveil new applications based on PayPal X, PayPal's open development platform.

The conference will feature dozens of interactive technical sessions covering everything from mobile applications and financial innovation, to creating peer-to-peer applications in developing markets. Attendees will get a preview of the PayPal X 2010 roadmap and have the opportunity to work directly with 200 PayPal engineers on their ideas. Those in attendance will also receive exclusive access to PayPal's new application programming interfaces (APIs), which will be announced at the conference. The APIs will not be available to non-attendees until 2010.