PayPal to announce new service aimed at easier access for online shoppers

PayPal, eBay's online payment service, plans to announce a new service that would make for easier online shopping and cut down on the number of accounts consumers had to create with various web retailers.

The PayPal Access would be unveiled at eBay's X.commerce developer conference in San Francisco and would be launched with X.commerce, a new eBay Inc business launching today, geared toward developers and merchants that would encourage developers to integrate eBay's technology into mobile commerce apps.

X.commerce would help merge the software developer communities for eBay.com, PayPal and eBay-owned e-commerce software company Magento, which between them count 850,000 developers.

According to eBay spokesman Anuj Nayar PayPal Access would let users log on to participating retailers' sites and transact with PayPal username and password, relieving them of the of the hassle of creating separate accounts as many online retailers currently required.

Currently, shoppers on some sites are required to set up an account even if they're paying through PayPal, the details for which they don't enter until near the end of the transaction. According to Nayar, the service would keep a user's personal details within PayPal.

Meanwhile in another initiative eBay is looking to deepen its relationship with social network leader Facebook, Reuters said quoting an unnamed person familiar with the e-commerce company.