eBay DevCon 08 - Tue17 09:30, PayPal technology Roadmap & Panel Discussion

This speak is a panel with the presence of Gleen Lim (General Manager, alliances and Developer Services) as moderator, Dickson Chu (VIP Global Product), Matthew Mengerink (VP Core Technologies), Osama Bedier (VP, Technology and Engineering).

The first question was about providing a better API for shipping (FedEx for example), and the reply is that this will be considered next year in the roadmap.

Q: Another question was about being able to join more than one account into one drop-down and being able to transfer money between them (like husband and wife). The answer is that this is fundamental feature in the core of the fraud system and a hard to change paradigm. The PayPal team informed that one possibility would be the sub-account feature.

Q: The IPN was intended to be a guaranteed way for the customer to receive any message related to his/her account. There were some recent problems and they are redesigning the system (today it tries for 16 times to send a message) from the ground. It was asked to have a simple button to resend and IPN and they informed the next API will allow someone to ask for IPNs from a starting date to an ending date.

Q: About shipping? - today is not possible to send an update status to eBay platform like, for example, telling PayPal that the items were shipped; PayPal answer is that they will think hard about.

Q: Sending money API? - it is definitely coming. It is also coming a Split Payment API.

Q: What are the plans for global expansions? - they are expanding through the globe aggressively. Central and South America are interesting markets for them. They just rolled out in Mexico and Brazil. These regions are exciting for them and will be a focus.

Q: Support to libraries? - PayPal will not support anymore the libraries that were distributed in the past.

Q: Advanced information about features? - today they are doing release notes; asking developers on what to they want to be exposed within PayPal. PayPal is a web company (innovates like mad) and is also a payments company (needs stability). This year it is more a dialog about new features and not a one-way communication, i.e. PayPal wants to hear the developers.

Note: PayPal wants to help the developers help their customers. This seems to be main topic during this conference. Lots of the moves from PayPal show this and it is the right way to go. If we look at eBay, nowadays they have a community of 70000 developers. Which company could afford that? And they get it "for free". The development of a more complete, stable and secure API is also a concern for the company.

Q: Will it be possible to add other email addresses and migrate accounts from old emails (which are not used anymore)? - this not a frequent request, but they will give some thought about it.

That was it!