PayPal.com’s New Makeover !

PayPal.com just got an app-inspired face-lift designed to make it easier for you to check your balance, transfer money, and most importantly for PayPal  do business with its merchant partners.

Starting Thursday, millions of PayPal customers in the United States and Germany will be able to access their accounts on a site that looks a lot more like the apps they use on their mobile devices.

The new site will roll out to all U.S. PayPal customers “over the coming weeks,” says the company, which showed Yahoo Tech a preview of the new site earlier this week.

On the new and improved PayPal.com, you’ll notice three major changes. The most obvious one is a cleaner, easier-to-read accounts page.

In the new scheme, you decide whether you’re paying for goods and services or transferring money between friends before you enter any information, such as the payee or amount.

The difference? If you’re buying goods, you pay no transaction fees. If you’re sending money to a friend or family member, you might pay a fee, depending on whether you’ve linked your bank accounts.


Smart PayPal users would choose the option that helps them avoid paying fees. The new design makes that slightly harder.

The final major change is the introduction of a digital wallet that makes it easier to shop online. The old site doesn’t have a dedicated wallet.


Why add a digital wallet to something that’s likely to be viewed on a desktop or laptop computer, especially when you don’t really need one to buy things online?

 Because PayPal plans to offer Web users discounts at local and online merchants, just as it does on its mobile platforms. The wallet is where you’ll save offers you plan to use later.

Interestingly, when I installed the latest PayPal mobile app, it came with a “saved offer” in my digital wallet for $15 off at 1800Flowers.com.

 I know I didn’t save it, so I assume PayPal did that for me.

All of these changes align with PayPal’s desire to become the mobile payments king. In the past two years, the company has shifted from helping people manage their money to helping them spend it, the better to collect fees from merchants on every transaction.


Unfortunately, that’s where the major changes to PayPal.com end. People who use PayPal’s site to manage a small business and who long for improvements to its abysmal search engine and limited reporting features will have to wait for another update.