A huge move for the ticketing industry took place in January with PayPal announcing their new partnership with the AXS platform.
It will now be easier for customers both in the US and the UK to buy, sell and transfer tickets via AXS, with payments accepted via the ever-popular PayPal e-wallet, which had 267 million active users in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The integration of PayPal is designed to speed up the payments process and to make it easier for customers around the globe to interact with their fellow AXS users with a common payment system.
Source: Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay
Fans can purchase tickets outright, re-sell those for events which they can no longer attend and exchange tickets for new dates; all will be reimbursed more efficiently via PayPal.
AXS has also launched their Mobile ID system, which will allow users to purchase and sell tickets using PayPal on their mobile devices. This also acts as their identification when attending events, meaning that there’s no need for paper or PDF tickets that can easily be lost or stolen, and makes exchanging tickets that bit easier.
It’s a big deal given that they have more than 200 clients, ranging from arenas and theaters to sports teams and clubs, making it easier for fans to see their favourite teams, bands and live performances.
“Fans expect a familiar and secure payment experience to make purchasing tickets to a live event even easier, and integration with PayPal was the obvious choice for us,” so said Ashish Kapur, the senior vice president of marketing at AXS.
PayPal Continues Worldwide Domination
Normally, it’s not good for the end consumer when a single entity dominates a specific market. It harms competition and ultimately leads to price rises and stagnation in product/service quality.
But, when it comes to making easy payments online, it’s good that PayPal has such a strong fingerprint.
It makes it easier for person-to-person transactions and traditional purchases from web-based businesses and, as we’ve already learned, there’s no coincidence that more than 250 million people use PayPal every three months.
There are some 17 million PayPal merchant accounts worldwide too, from Amazon to Domino’s Pizza and from Nike to Buzz Bingo. Each of these companies has understood what that data s telling them: this is how the majority of their customers want to transact, whether they are buying a 12-inch margarita or the latest trends in footwear.
Once the payment platform for individuals who have just won an auction on eBay, today, PayPal is a business behemoth; not bad for a decade’s work.
Source: Mediamodifier via Pixabay
Many don’t know that PayPal, in its early incarnation, was actually developed by Elon Musk, the technology entrepreneur also responsible for Tesla and the SpaceX project. His company, X.com, merged with Confinity, which was PayPal’s initial identity.
The firm became known as PayPal in 2001 and, just a year later, it was acquired by eBay for a steady $1.5 billion. It was arguably at this point, given the huge customer base that uses the online auctions channel, that the popularity of PayPal was assured.
The brand was given further authority when it linked up with a number of major credit and debit card suppliers to enhance security in an age of digital hacking. Verified by Visa and Secure Card both helped to boost confidence amongst an older generation not wholly comfortable with the idea of online payments.
In the second quarter of 2018 alone, PayPal made nearly $4 billion in revenue; growth of some 23% on the same period in 2017. It would appear that demand for the brand shows no signs of slowing down.
