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Wireless: Article

PayPal Co-Founder to Compete with His Baby

He’s whittled the process down to two taps

By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
March 4, 2013 07:45 AM EST
Reads:
 1,883

PayPal co-founder and former CTO Max Levchin has started a rival service called Affirm focused on mobile payments that's supposed to make check-outs from mobile devices faster and easier.

He's whittled the process down to two taps rather than having the user struggle to input information from the smartphones' keyboard.

All it will take is a tap on the Affirm logo on the merchant's web site and an order confirmation tap.

The scheme uses Facebook to confirm user identities.

Users, who will sign up for Affirm on Facebook, have 30 days to pay for their purchases - just like a charge card - and Affirm gets a fee from the merchant or charges users for delinquent accounts.

Users can pay their balances via credit cards, bank transfers or checks but not PayPal.

The dominance of the eBay-owned Paypal is already being challenged by a bunch of start-ups including Square.

Levchin designed PayPal's online security and fraud prevention widgetry.

Published March 4, 2013 – Reads 1,883
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Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

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