Hands-on with PayPal’s UK inStore mobile payment service

Earlier this morning PayPal launched its inStore payments service in the UK, providing a new and simple way for consumers to pay for items and redeem discounts using their Android and iOS smartphone.

Already live in every Home Depot store in the US and soon to roll out across 15 more retailers, PayPal has brought its mobile service to its second biggest market, the UK, partnering with Aurora Fashions — one of the biggest fashion retailers in the region — and four of its popular retail chains in Oasis, Warehouse, Karen Millen and Coast.

The Next Web was invited to PayPal’s launch event at London’s Westfield Stratford shopping center, getting the chance to go hands-on with the iOS and Android apps and see just how PayPal intends to take Britain’s High Street by storm.

Paying for your items

PayPal’s inStore apps are really simple to use. If you want to pay for an item sold by a participating retailer, you can download the app (App Store | Google Play), open the PayPal inStore app, enter a pin and hit the ‘Pay inStore’ option.

The app will then bring up a unique barcode that can be scanned by an assistant or keyed into the register manually. If that particular store also happens to be running a discount or promotion, the app will automatically register it for you and deduct it from the total — meaning there’s no rummaging around for a separate code or barcode.

The app registers the purchase and will immediately update to show any transactions you have made. If you no longer want the item, you can also use PayPal inStore to request a refund, as shown in the video below:

Keeping things simple and somewhat easier to manage, PayPal has opted for a barcode solution, not NFC. This allows the company to roll out the app to other platforms and bank on existing point-of-sale technologies instead of relying on wireless payment terminals.

PayPal hopes to integrate its inStore service with a whole host of UK retailers, providing APIs that allow brands to quickly and securely add PayPal payments to their point-of-sale registers. There is also scope for iPad support, with Oasis (the store in which we tested the service) already offering inStore payments via a holstered iPad and barcode scanner.

You can view how it integrated the platform in the images below:

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