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

At the event in London, DHL’s Exporter Advisor David Knight will join PayPal’s Senior Business Development Manager Beverley Bergin to answer questions and talk to attendees.

Numbers are limited but you will get a glass of wine. You can sign up here.

There will be no additional costs incurred for businesses and nothing on the existing website is affected by the process. Installing the plugin though will give a mobile shopfront with larger product photos, buttons, links, and text to make it easy for customers to shop on their mobile device.

PayPal also announced PayPal “PayPal Mobile Payments Standard” solution for Singapore, which automatically provides merchants that accept PayPal on their website with a mobile payment checkout experience optimized for mobile devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod and Android. PayPal detects when customers are using their mobile for the payment process and redirects them to a mobile-optimized payment page, even if the merchant’s website is not optimized for mobile devices.

While a mobile optimized payment checkout experience can help to increase mobile sales, the ultimate mobile commerce solution for businesses is to offer a website designed specifically for mobile devices. That’s where the PayPal Mobile Store Plugin comes in, giving a fully mobile optimised experience to customers at no additional cost to the merchant.

I really like the simplicity with which PayPal can now offer a customised experience for mobile customers and the fact it’s free. All we need to know is when can we have it in the UK?

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

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.

The hiatus was caused when Yahoo! investor Third Point, who own 6% of Yahoo!, raised the issue of Scott Thompson’s credentials. Third Point CEO Dan Loeb and two of his nominees will join Yahoo!’s board so they appear to have got what they wanted from the mess.

It’s not just at Yahoo! that Thompson’s CV claimed the disputed Computer Science qualification. Although during his time at eBay and PayPal it doesn’t appear to have been an issue – he was recorded as having “a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and Computer Science from Stonehill College”. Not quite the degree in “business administration with a major in accounting” that he actually held. It appears that the description of his qualifications was carried across to Yahoo! and no one ever verified his actual qualifications at either company.

I do feel sorry for Scott, I’ve never been asked for my ‘O’ Level or ‘A’ Level certificates which are happily gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. If you asked my what my qualifications are I’d probably get the details wrong but it really doesn’t matter what education I had a over a quarter of a century ago – it’s my current experience that counts.

Up until Friday Scott Thompson was still listed as President of PayPal on the eBay Singapore site and on eBay he also apparently had a Computer Science qualification. This link has now been redirected to the up to date eBay Inc leadership page. Mind you it’s not unusual for eBay pages to be out of date but unless they cause embarrassment they’re never changed. According to eBay Australia Meg Whitman is still CEO of eBay even though she resigned in November 2007.

Updated to add: News has surfaced that Scott Thompson told the Yahoo!’s board that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer before announcing his resignation. Our thoughts are with him and his family.

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?

It’s not the end of the world, he does hold a degree business administration with a major in accounting which lets face it is probably better qualification for a CEO then a degree in computer science. Yahoo! say that “there was an inadvertent error that stated Mr. Thompson also holds a degree in computer science”, but it’s given a Yahoo! investor cause to call for him to be sacked.

Of course it’s no accident that this particular investor spotted the discrepancy between actual and claimed qualifications. They are hoping shareholders will elect themselves to the Yahoo! board of directors so any shake up could work in their favour.