WordPress.com is making it easier for bloggers to accept online payments using PayPal.
While the web hosting service and publishing giant already supported PayPal payments, the process involved a rather long-winded, nine-step sequence, starting with having to find your PayPal button code.
Moving forward, things will be a lot quicker.
“We knew that we wanted to make an existing process simpler,” explained John Maeda, global head of computational design and inclusion at parent company Automattic. “So we set a design goal of bringing a 15-minute-long process to under a minute — especially for a customer that has never used PayPal before.”
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The result of the work is a simple button that can be inserted from a dropdown menu in any new post.
Above: Payment button
When you hit “Add Payment Button,” you’ll be prompted to include details of what it is you’re selling and add the email address of the associated PayPal account.
Above: New button form
And that’s it. You can then insert the button and product description on any page on your site.
Above: Insert button and description
When a visitor hits the “Pay with PayPal” button, they’ll be guided through the usual PayPal payments process.
Above: PayPal: Checkout
It’s worth noting here that the feature isn’t quite ready for prime time — it is currently limited to those who subscribe to the Premium and Business WordPress.com plans “while we tune and refine how it can work best,” Maeda said.
As PayPal is of the most popular online consumer payment mechanisms, it makes sense for WordPress.com to streamline PayPal transactions on its platform. The move comes hot on the heels of a bunch of high-profile integrations for the payments service, as Google’s Android Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple have all embraced PayPal in the past few months.
