Paypal today announced the launch of the PayPal Storefront Widget. The new tool allows any seller to embed a virtual storefront into blogs, websites and social networking sites.
Judy Chang from the Distributed Payments team, who announced the launch on the
PayPal blog this morning explains, "if you're an artist creating crafts, a band selling t-shirts or a charity offering branded merchandise, the storefront gives you the basics you need to sell online."
Chang goes on to say that the idea for the Storefront Widget came from customer feedback, who wanted an easier solution for selling items directly from their blogs and social networking sites including
MySpace.
The Storefront works by allowing buyers to select items by adding them to a shopping cart and then checking out securely via PayPal. It also allows third parties to take the code of an individual storefront to post on their own site, blog or social network and sell items on behalf of the Seller with all payments delivered securely back to them.
The Storefront Widget follows the launch of PayPal's Facebook application in early November, which allows the social networks users to
raise money for fundraisers, charities and non-profits.
eBay, the owners of PayPal launched their own widget
'ToGo' in June 2007. ToGo allows users to share eBay listings on sites, blogs and social networks.