PayPal: The Internet ATM
PayPal is, in my opinion, one of the greatest
services to hit the Internet in a long time. PayPal is also a perfect example
of how traditional brick-and-morter businesses must adapt to the Internet or become
irrelevant.
With an e-mail address and a credit card or bank account, I can instantly send money
to anyone else with an e-mail address - provided they are a PayPal user. More
importantly, anyone with an e-mail address and a credit card or bank account can instantly
send me money without having to be a PayPal customer.
And you can get pretty creative with PayPal, too.
A few weeks ago I was playing poker with some good friends of mine. Unfortunately,
Lady Luck was not smiling upon me this evening and the cash I had brought to the game
was now sitting in my friends' hands. Of course, they'd be happy to loan me
the money back, knowing I'm good for it - but I hate being in debt to friends.
That's when Andrew had the great idea of using PayPal. I walked over to his
kiosk, logged into PayPal, sent Andrew the money directly from my checking account,
and walked over to Andrew to collect the cash.
PayPal - the Internet ATM.
Just to prove how cool it is, click
here to send me $1.00 via PayPal.
