The main benefits to businesses are:

• Extended payment terms of net 45+ days
• Credit terms on both AmazonSupply.com and Amazon.com
• Statements with invoice-level detail
• Online account management
• Dedicated customer service

To open up a line of credit with Amazon you’ll need to open and Amazon.com account and complete the Amazon credit application form. Then you’re all set to make purchases on both Amazon.com and AmazonSupply.com. You simply select your Amazon Corporate Credit Line as the payment method for your order.

This makes perfect sense and is something that eBay have never cracked. Whilst eBay have “Business Accounts” for sellers they’ve never implemented business buying accounts. Any company that wishes to make a purchase from eBay are pretty much treated the same as a consumer as far as credit terms go. Businesses don’t like paying cash up front, they like to be invoiced and let the accounts department take care of payments.

Business credit accounts make perfect sense and in conjunction with the newly branded AmazonSupply website Amazon are set to grab a slice of the many companies purchasing budgets.

Slowpal was built initially as an internal tool, Liad of Shoply told me, to make it quicker and easier for Shoply to manage their own transactions. It turned out so good that they decided to make it public so others can benefit from the time savings it offers.

Through managing the Shoply marketplace they’ve had to deal with tens of thousands of transactions running through Paypal. Searching, browsing, filtering transaction reports on PayPal aren’t the easiest processes to manage and often take some time to generate. SlowPal speeds everything up as well as adding real insights and business intelligence to help you grow your business.

SlowPal is PayPal reports on steroids, and yes it’s now all SSL and ready to use

That’s not unusual, I’ve had a balance in my PayPal account for as long as I can remember, although I’ve been using it less frequently of late. I’m not going to withdraw the balance either – it’s handy for when I want to buy something on eBay.

It makes sense for PayPal to contact people with balances in their accounts though, no point having the money sitting in PayPal’s account when they could be earning fees from payments. Even if it’s in an interest bearing account 3.4% plus 20p per transaction is probably more profitable than the paltry rate of interest the banks are paying these days.

Sadly I’m about to list some old laptops on eBay for sale so the balance will probably grow rather than shrink, but thanks for the reminder PayPal, much appreciated

What no one has done so far is to connect SoLoMo commerce with payments, but now Moocho has found a way to cross Facebook with Square and create a totally new payment phenomenon. Reminiscent of how Facebook started Moocho has introduced a seamless mobile payment app at seven major US universities. The program also gives students access to exclusive discounts on everyday purchases.

With Moocho Open Tab technology, students can make purchases at Moocho merchants by just using their name. It’s like the old days when it was common to say, “Put it on my tab” at the pub. This makes a Moocho Open Tab purchase simple, convenient and fast. Plus with Moocho Open Tab students accumulate loyalty rewards with each purchase.

Students sign up for a free Moocho Open Tab account at moocho.com by linking a credit or debit card to their account. Each student immediately receives $1 to $5 free credit at every participating merchant and access to exclusive discounts. Plus, every purchase earns more credit to use next time.

For those financially strapped students with amenable parents Moocho has also introduced “Parent Mooch”. With this program parents automatically pay for food and groceries at any participating Moocho merchant.

I have to admit to a certain amount of skepticism whenever I’m told of the latest great idea. However there are a number of key pointers that could make Moocho a success. Firstly students are naturally some of the most avid consumers of technology, that’s partly what made Facebook a success. Students are open to new ideas and will share them with their friends until everyone is in on the latest craze.

More importantly the team behind Moocho aren’t strangers to building and growing a technology company. Matt Levenson, Moocho’s Founder and CEO, was the founding COO for StubHub which sold to eBay for over $300 million and he’s not the only one in the Moocho management team that came from StubHub.

By launching at Colorado State University, Ohio State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin – Madison and West Virginia University Moocho have pretty much cancelled out their competition. They’re starting small but expansion to other universities will be easy.

Of course one day their early customers will grow up and leave university and the chances are that in a few years time Moocho could expand beyond their academic target market and we could all be Mooching. Once upon a time access to Facebook was only through academic institutions and look what happened there.

The offer is valid until the 27th May 2012 for full price menu items but can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer. To get your 35% discount and treat your staff to lunch order simply online at Dominos, enter the voucher code MKNCUAQX at checkout and pay with PayPal.

The two companies are investing $25 million on a 50:50 basis in the new company and will each have three directors on the board.

PayPal and SOFTBANK also announced PayPal Here in Japan, the fifth country to receive this global mobile payment solution that is already available in the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. PayPal Here will enable millions of Japanese small businesses to accept credit/debit cards and PayPal payments through a smartphone.

eBay don’t have a great record in Japan having pulled out in 2002, trying again with an eBay/Yahoo! partnership in 2007, and currently eBay/GMarket in 2010. The current “eBay Japan” marketplace is branded Qoo10 in association with eBay.

For eBay to have a better record in Japan for payments than they had with marketplaces it’s essential that they partner with a Japanese company. SOFTBANK already have local market knowledge, 29 million mobile subscribers and a distribution network including thousands of retail outlets and sales staff across Japan. PayPal add the products and services to make payments work.

As an aside PayPal Here is now available in USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia but not anywhere in Europe. Could this be because payments are more advanced in the UK and EU and swiping a credit card is so passe? We need a Chip and PIN solution so PayPal will need to provide new solutions to meet the needs of European payments. It does seem strange that PayPal are handing out free swipe versions of PayPal Here around the world when even the US will soon move away from swiping credit cards and retailers will bear all losses from fraud if they continue to swipe cards. I’m guessing that PayPal will have an announcement soon for an EU payments solution as the market is simply too big to miss out on.

You’ll still need a merchant banking facility for online payments, but there are several advantages to using Actinic Payments for your website.

Firstly the fees are low, between 16p and 40p per transaction but importantly there is no percentage charges or monthly fees from Actinic – the only other fee you’ll pay is from your bank. Crucially there is only one point of contact for support for both your website and for payment processing. If something isn’t working then Actinic can help you to resolve any technical or operational issues.

Managing payments is made easy, all of the third man authentication information is provided directly within Actinic Online alongside your customer’s order. You can refund, void and commit pre-authorised payments from your admin console with no need to log into a third party gateway payment website to manage payments.

For the technical bit, Actinic Payments is 100% PCI-DSS compliant (to level 1), offers a sophisticated fraud screening service as well as 3D Secure (Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode), AVS for verifying a customer billing address and CVV2 (the 3 digit card verification number). Actinic Payments is powered by Credit Call .

The real killer selling point is that once you have a merchant account number that can be used for Internet payments and your Actinic Online account is opened then Actinic set up Actinic Payments for your website and you have no integration work to do. Everything is done for you and you’re ready to start selling.

PayPal are going to speed up transfers between PayPal and your bank account. Both ways!

It will mean that money movements between PayPal and bank account will be according to faster payments standards and a new policy section will be included to cover this. It will mean that when you withdraw funds from your PayPal account they’ll appear in your bank account perhaps not instantly, but definitely within a couple of hours.

It will spell the end of the £5.00 charge to withdraw money from your PayPal account within a day instead of 2-3 days as all withdrawls will be faster payments. It will also mean if you top your PayPal account up from your bank account this will also be instantaneous (again at least within a couple of hours).

PayPal will progressively roll out faster payments during summer and should be completed for all users by late summer. The update will be done gradually because of the volume of payments that go through PayPal.

Great news for selling on eBay though, list it, sell it, get paid by PayPal and five minutes later the cash could be in your bank balance and available to spend.

They all lost, years later a little company called Skype came along and conquered the voice over IP market and now you don’t initiate a “VoIP call” you simply “Skype” someone. Sure Google Talk is out there, but the majority of the world is on Skype.

There was no need for Skype to win the VoIP market, if manufacturers had cooperated instead of working to block competitors integrating with their technology they could perhaps have all been winners, and now the same situation is developing with payments.

PayPal is of course pretty much the defacto payment system today, at least on eBay. As they start to develop digital wallet solutions others are chasing fast. Google has had a go with Google Checkout/Google Wallet and not got very far, but there are far bigger payments companies breathing down their necks.

I constantly see adverts for Barclay’s new Ping It app on the TV (I hate to think how much they’re spending, but it’s an elegant solution if you want to do bank to bank transfers in the UK). Mastercard also have a new wallet out (an extension to PayPass) similar to V.me from Visa and Serve from Amex.

Competing payments companies are arguing over the pros (ease of use and security) and cons (no one has the hardware in place) of Near Field Communications (NFC). Other companies like PayPal are ignoring NFC completely and looking to other solutions and Square can even operate based on a picture of your face for verification of a transaction.

What’s bothering me though is how many digital wallets will I need in the future? One retailer will accept my PayPal wallet whilst another will take Google Wallet. I’ll go for a meal and pay with Square and my face, but my mates will want to send me their share of the bill with Barclay’s Ping It. One awkward chum will have Amex and another will be on V.me.

I just want one digital wallet that serves everyone. I want interoperability in payments and be able to send and receive payments from my digital wallet regardless of what solution you use. I don’t care if you prefer Google, Square or even Nochex, I just want to be able to pay you.

In offline payments I’ve never yet been told I can’t pay by Visa because the merchant prefers Mastercard. How can we be allowing a situation where I can’t pay with Google Checkout because the merchant prefers PayPal?

I have to admit to having been a bit skeptical of eBay’s intentions, they’ve not always managed to use the technology that they’ve purchased (Think Skype and Stumbleupon. Skype was one third of “The Power of Three” slogan and the new way to communicate on eBay and Stumbleupon was going to surface all sorts of interesting products. Neither of these happened).

Where has made it though and been reborn as the PayPal Media Network (PPMN). PPMN offers unique location-based mobile advertising solutions to enable retailers in the US target consumers via mobile when they’re in the vicinity.

PayPal Media Network with Where technology gives advertisers the ability to serve a relevant advert to a buyer and can give the option for the buyer to make an immediate purchase and can even offer the choice of collecting the item as they’re passing or having it delivered to their home, all at the click of a button.

It’s not just a solution for mobiles either, the solution can also target consumers when they’re on the net. PayPal Media Network’s behavioral targeting parameters include purchase, browsing, and search history. Purchase history is one of the strongest indicators of a consumer’s intent, far more effective than most other forms of targeting. By using this proprietary and anonymous user data advertiser can precisely target the right consumers with the right message at the right time.

Imagine you’re browsing a popular online marketplace. Let’s call that marketplace “eBay”. There you’ll find some advertising on view item pages just beneath the seller information box. Unlike blanket advertising which you may or may not be interested in Where’s technology enables PayPal Media Network to analyse your purchase history and identify the types of product you’re likely to be interested in.

We’re not that impressed with eBay’s current blanket marketing campaign and Dan still isn’t interested in a mini skirt to go with the Moccasins he’s also not going to buy. Now if they could start serving up interesting ads for Sci Fi and Dr Who that would soon spring some funds from his PayPal account.

eBay you still don’t know me or what I like to buy, but I’m hopeful that one day you might!