Following the TechCrunch story earlier today about PayPal's Application Platform, Osama Bedier, VP of platform and emerging technology at PayPal, has posted an article on the PayPal Blog saying: "...it is true that PayPal will be the first and only global payments platform open to third-party developers allowing them to easily monetize their ideas."

The PayPal Blog notes that JP Morgan has recently published an "in-depth analysis on the PayPal business".

PayPal has released a new survey released finding that nearly half (45 percent) of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times in the past three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and lack of convenience. According to PayPal's survey, the average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109. READ MORE

On the New York Times Bits blog, Saul Hansell writes about PayPal's fraud risk management techniques - noting that "you may not have ever bought anything with PayPal, but it’s got a file on you anyway, just in case."

In an article titled "Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone", Claire Cain Miller and Matt Richtel write for the New York Times about Obopay (and MasterCard's MoneySend launched last week with Obopay), Boku, Zong and PayPal.

[Editor's note: one facet of a couple of these services that the article's authors fail to note is the cost of payment acceptance - and how that cost varies from service to service. In some segments - such as virtual goods where merchants have a close to zero cost of goods sold - merchants can afford to pay a lot to gain widespread acceptance on cell phones. Other merchants, with real costs of goods sold, would find the costs of these approaches out of the question. There's a similar story when it comes to person-to-person money transfer. For domestic transfers in the US, there's a certain cost sensitivity. For international remittances involving currency conversion, on the other hand, there's a much greater opportunity to price for value. Need help understanding all of this? Drop us a note here!]

PayPal CEO Scott Thompson was interviewed at Wired's first Business Conference - “Disruptive by Design” - held in New York earlier this week. In the interview, Scott talks about the history of PayPal, how the company innovated to integrate with national payment systems in many countries around the world, and the innovations in risk management that have been fundamental to PayPal's success.

Read Scott's blog post about the interview - and you can watch the full video of the interview here. Highly recommended!

PayPal has announced that, effective today, "you can send money via PayPal to friends and family in the US for free" - as long as the payment is funded from your bank checking account or your PayPal account balance. You can also pay using a credit card and, if so, "you can choose to pay the fee or have the recipient pay it."

BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan writes about meeting with PayPal president Scott Thompson recently where he dispelled rumors that PayPal might follow its sister business unit Skype and be spun out of eBay. Thompson noted that the acquisition last fall of Bill Me Later was easier to accomplish with the strength of eBay's balance sheet.

Over on The PayPal Blog, Bill Clark, an analyst in the risk team at PayPal, writes about why PayPal has rolling seller reserves in place. He notes that "PayPal may require that a small percentage of some of our sellers’ payment volume be held in their account for a period of time, sort of like a security deposit to cover future chargebacks and reversals."

PayPal Australia has announced "a new programme to help more organisations get online and take advantage of the Internet to open up new revenue streams. With e-commerce expected to continue to grow in the coming years, PayPal will launch a ‘Certified Developer and Partner Program’ to recruit developers and solution providers to help meet the growing demand for online payments outside of the retail sector. In addition, the company has made new tools and resources available to help organisations such as charities, foundations, schools and universities start accepting online payments and donations easily." READ MORE

Saul Hansell of the New York Times has a post on the BITS blog titled "Undoing Meg Whitman’s eBay" in which he looks at the recent actions by eBay CEO John Donahue undoing several of the acquisitions done by former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Hansell writes that Donahue is, however, excited about PayPal - but asks what PayPal is trying to be - and questions whether it adds value.

PayPal's parent eBay announced financial results for the first quarter 2009 today. PayPal's revenue grew 11% year over year to $645 million. PayPal's purchase volume grew 18% on an foreign exchange-neutral basis to $15.9 billion. PayPal reported 73.1 active accounts, up 22%. PayPal's revenue ("global take rate") came in at 3.81% of payment volume with transaction expense rate at 1.16% and a transaction loss rate of 0.28%

PayPal and The Royal Bank of Scotland have won the ‘Best New Prepaid Card Product of the Year’ at Card Awards 2009 for their PayPal Top Up product, which is processed by global payments services provider, TSYS. READ MORE

Blackbaud, a provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, and PayPal have announced the availability of BlackbaudNow - calling it "an affordable solution to help new and growing nonprofits reach their fundraising goals. BlackbaudNow offers nonprofits a point-and-click website builder with secure donation processing and the ability to send emails and record donors’ giving histories." READ MORE

Link2Gov has announced that it now offers Bill Me Later as a payment option for qualified taxpayers. Taxpayers can now log onto BML.PAY1040.com, powered by Link2Gov, to pay their individual or business federal taxes. Bill Me Later offers customers credit for single transactions at the point of payment online, and provides authorization for approved customers within seconds. In addition to federal taxes, Link2Gov plans to add Bill Me Later as a standard payment option along with the card-based and electronic check payment solutions it provides to non-IRS government agencies of all sizes. READ MORE

Following yesterday's fee change announcement by Google Checkout, Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness has just posted a look at pricing across the three major online payment providers over on PaymentsViews.com.

What is PaymentsViews.com? It's our newest online site for payments professionals - devoted to analysis, commentary and opinions beyond just the news of the day we cover here on PaymentsNews.com.

In a post over on PaymentsViews.com titled "eBay Analyst Day: PayPal World Domination", Glenbrook's Erin McCune reviews what she heard from the presentations at today's eBay Analyst Day.

eBay is holding its 2009 Analyst Day today. In addition to webcasting the event, eBay is also tweeting highlights from the presentations using Twitter @ebayinkblog. You can follow the hashtag #ebayinc for comments from others as well.

GlobalPlatform, the international specification body for smart card infrastructure, has announced that PayPal has become its latest member. According to the organization, "PayPal, the leading global online payments service, will bring its expertise to GlobalPlatform and contribute to the ongoing development of standards to ensure interoperability across the payments industry." READ MORE

Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek about eBay's upcoming annual analyst meeting scheduled for this Wednesday, March 11. Burrows quotes PayPal senior Vice-President Jack Stephenson: "We're going to give more visibility than we ever have on our sources of revenue, and our growth opportunities."

The Reserve Bank of Australia's Payments System Board has announced that it has "recently been considering PayPal’s and eBay’s rules that prohibit merchants from surcharging customers for the use of PayPal and from discouraging the use of PayPal." Following its review, the Board said it was not going to impose any new regulation now on PayPal's practices because of PayPal's relatively small size in the online market. READ MORE

eBay reported fourth quarter 2008 financial results this afternoon - saying its

Payments business unit [PayPal + Bill Me Later] posted another solid quarter with $623 million in revenue, an increase of 11% year over year. Net total payment volume (TPV) for the quarter was $15.99 billion, an increase of 14% year over year. The revenue and net TPV growth was fueled by expanded adoption of PayPal Merchant Services across the Web and the inclusion of Bill Me Later, acquired on November 7, 2008. Active accounts reached 70 million, an increase of 23% year-over-year. The Payments business will continue to focus on greater penetration into the Marketplaces business as well as the acquisition of new merchants."

Amazon.com has announced that effective today Bill Me Later will no longer be accepted as a payment option on Amazon.com. Bill Me Later was acquired earlier this year by eBay/PayPal. More details are available in the Amazon Seller Forum and in this article on AuctionBytes.

It's almost the end of 2008 ("good riddens" comes to my mind!) - and we've been exploring a bit. Steve Rubel had a great blog post this morning about using Google's Insights for Search feature to read the "tea leaves" about trends in 2009. He calls it "the closest thing we have to a global time capsule."

One interesting result I found was looking at how PayPal has trended over the last four years - with over twice as much interest demonstrated in PayPal today vs. four years ago.

Another interesting result in the PayPal summary is the strong interest in the UK vs. the US, France and other markets around the world. The top PayPal search term is "PayPal UK" - wonder why that is?

Here's one for Twitter - showing how interest in Twitter has grown like a weed during 2008.

Using the Google Insights for Search tool, you can search for and compare multiple terms - for example, here's PayPal vs. MasterCard - showing search interest in MasterCard remaining flat while PayPal's grew steadily. Curiously, if you look at the top searches related to MasterCard, the top result is "mastercard visa".

Give Google Insights for Search a try using your favorite payments-related phrase. If you find more interesting results, please share them in the comments here!

Hourtown, a service we wrote about earlier this year that allows small businesses and service providers to have an automated online scheduling capability, has added the ability for service providers to have their clients pay online at the time of booking for their appointments.

According to Hourtown's Ryan Donahue, "local service professionals have historically lacked tools that enable them to really transact and sell their services online. Hourtown's new feature essentially enables an ecommerce storefront for a service professional's time." Hourtown's new feature is powered by PayPal.

AirTran Airways has announced that it is making it faster for travelers to buy tickets online by offering PayPal Express Checkout. PayPal Express Checkout uses the information on file in a member's PayPal account to speed through checkout and bypass the need to enter passenger contact information and financial details. READ MORE

PayPal has announced a new way for members to add even more security to their PayPal accounts using their mobile phones. PayPal members can now choose to receive a unique six-digit security code via text message to their mobile phones prior to logging in to their accounts. READ MORE

Eddie Davis writes on the PayPal Blog about PayPal's new Global Selling Guide for ecommerce merchants. "The guide includes information on the unique holiday customs of 17 nations and tips on a variety of topics including shipping, payments, customs, and tax considerations."

PayPal has announced that it has expanded its service with fully localized sites in Mexico, Hong Kong and Singapore and an improved online experience for customers around the world. PayPal also launched nine new languages on its Web site including Bahasa Indonesian, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese and Turkish. READ MORE

American Airlines has announced that it is now accepting PayPal for ticket purchases made on its AA.com website. READ MORE