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Google developing online payment system - CEO

Google developing online payment system - CEO - Yahoo! News

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.(Nasdaq:GOOG - news) is developing an online payment system but is not building a direct rival to eBay Inc.'s (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) PayPal, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.

The comments from Google's CEO came after several days of heated speculation, following published reports that the company was working on potential rival to PayPal (EBAY.O), eBay's popular online payment system.

Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a "person-to-person stored-value payments system" like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google plan would differ.

"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt told Reuters in a brief telephone interview in which he declined to elaborate.

"We believe that e-commerce can be improved and we are working on ways to improve the user experience," Schmidt said.

Shares of Google closed up $1.14, or 0.4 percent, to $287.84. Shares of eBay finished down 34 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $36.90 prior to Schmidt's comments. Both stocks trade on the Nasdaq.

June 21, 2005 at 08:15 PM in Payments | Permalink | TrackBack (18) | Top of page | Blog Home