After a six-week test program, PayPal is rolling out an in-store payment system to Home Depots throughout the country. Within the next two weeks, almost every one of Home Depot's 2,000 U.S. locations will be equipped to accept payment through a PayPal card or a mobile phone and PIN number combination.
"The Home Depot integration is a great milestone for us, proof that we're making our vision for the future of shopping a reality, but it's only the beginning," PayPal vice president of retail and prepaid products Don Kingsborough said in a blog post. "We're going to continue re-imagining money to make it work better for our retail partners and their valued customers–stay tuned for more exciting innovations to come."
At the beginning of January, PayPal began testing the point-of-sale system at five Home Depots. On Monday, it began to roll out the platform to stores in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, and the North Plains. On March 2, it will expand to West Coast cities, the greater New York area, and Boston, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. The following week, it will launch in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, Chicago, and St. Louis.
PayPal had a fantastic 2011, processing nearly $4 billion worth of mobile payments, up from $750 million in 2010 and $141 million in 2009, the company said last month. What's more, at the start of 2011, PayPal originally predicted $1.5 billion in mobile payments, though it widened those projections three times.