PayPal One Touch Prepares Big Push Ahead of Black Friday

With summer’s last hoorah effectively down, and October now closer than is comfortable for some out there, retailers’ thoughts lightly-and in some cases much too heavily, as evidenced by the Christmas decorations out in some stores-to thoughts of the holiday shopping season.

With some already beginning their Christmas shopping, PayPal is thinking about Black Friday itself, and is bracing for big gains ahead of the big shopping day with a focus on its new One Touch system.

With PayPal One Touch, PayPal users no longer need to log in multiple times from the same device, a time savings move which cuts down on the hassle of having to log in and re-log in going from one store to another.

That makes PayPal easier to use, and now that it’s competing in the mobile payments space with Apple Pay and its ilk, PayPal needs every advantage it can get on its side.

The release of PayPal One Touch is expected to fuel a firestorm of users, as PayPal expects over five million merchants will give users access to PayPal in stores, and by the end of the year, fully 36 million customers will turn to PayPal One Touch, up from an already-impressive figure of 22 million.

PayPal also expects it will generate over $25,000 in payment volume per second on Cyber Monday-the prime time for online holiday shopping after Black Friday-which will deliver plenty of revenue growth in the process.

Of course, the problem with these assessments is that Black Friday in general has been falling off as shoppers push back against its incursion into Thanksgiving Day, and more shoppers go online.

Cyber Monday is likewise falling off as the circumstances which engendered the influx of online shopping-the fact that only businesses had the high-speed Internet access that made online shopping desirable-have also changed.

Yet mobile payments aren’t just useful in stores; PayPal and Apple Pay can be a part of online shopping too, so big spikes on Black Friday and Cyber Monday may be replaced with steadier volume throughout November and December.

Still, it’s likely to be good news for PayPal, as a rising tide is likely to lift all boats, and OneTouch helps ensure all PayPal’s oars are in that water.